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alumni/ae page |
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October 2000 “Brooklyn Friends School is probably the only place I know where the message of having, knowing, and acting on your values is central to the educational mission. By the time I graduated from BFS, I thought fighting for your ideals was what you were supposed to do. In fact, I was encouraged to call a strike of girls in the eighth grade, and in high school to run week-long programs concerning issues of hunger and the plight of immigrants fleeing war-torn countries.” —Sara Horowitz Sara Horowitz ’80 is the founder and executive director of Working Today, a national non-profit organization that promotes the interests of America’s independent workforce. Her work is based on the realization that the benefit-delivery systems and labor laws that were created in the 1930s to support the large industrial workplace are no longer relevant to the growing “mobile” workforce. Her approach to the issues has been so innovative that in 1999 she was given the prestigious John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation award, an honor bestowed on “exceptionally creative individuals” in their fields. Sara’s organization promotes the interests of independent workers in three ways: by providing services such as access to health insurance and legal assistance to independent workers; by educating independent workers, policymakers, funders, and the press about the implications of the new economy for a changing workforce; and by advocating for policy changes to help protect independent workers. Before founding Working Today, Sara was a labor attorney in private practice and a union organizer with 1199, the National Health and Human Service Employees Union. She earned a Masters degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a law degree cum laude from the SUNY Buffalo Law School. She is a graduate of Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, which awarded her its labor prize. Sara started Working Today in 1995 and was named Public Interest Pioneer by the Stern Family Fund in 1996. The Rockefeller Foundation recently invited her to join its Next Generation Leadership Program, and she has been awarded three fellowships from Echoing Green which grants funding to individuals who serve as a catalyst for social change. Sara is a member of the Task Force on Restructuring America’s Labor Market Institutions, sponsored by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was also recently invited to participate in “Emerging Labor Market Institutions for the 21st Century,” a research group of academics, policy experts, and practitioners convened by Harvard University, the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the Economic Policy Institute. She also serves as an arbitrator of employment disputes with the American Arbitration Association. “At BFS I heard Bayard Rustin, the great civil rights and labor leader, speak, watched anti-war movies once a week for half a year, and got to make many morning meeting speeches that, in retrospect, went on for too long and involved a few too many tears,” says Sara. “My time at BFS gave me the grounding to learn and hold onto my values, to keep my heart and mind focused on having the courage of my convictions, and to be proud that they still matter so much.” |
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