Sara Horowitz founded Working Today in 1995 to represent the needs and concerns of the growing independent workforce. Working Today built Freelancers Union to pioneer a new form of unionism, and the organization now has 100,000 members nationwide. Freelancers Union seeks to update the nation’s social safety net, developing systems so that all working people can access affordable benefits, regardless of their job arrangements. As executive director, Sara takes an entrepreneurial approach, pursuing creative, market-based solutions to pressing social problems.
In recognition of her efforts to create a self-sustaining organization of flexible workers, Sara was awarded a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1999. 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. Prior to joining 1199, Sara was a public defender in New York City.
A lifelong resident of Brooklyn, NY, Sara comes from a long line of labor advocates, including her father, who was a labor lawyer, and her grandfather, who was vice president of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union. This family history of involvement in the labor movement led Sara to Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, where she was awarded its labor prize. She later earned a law degree cum laude from the SUNY Buffalo Law School and a master’s degree from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Sara is a trustee of the Nathan Cummings Foundation and is on the board of the Women’s Housing and Economic Development Corporation. Freelancers Union has been featured throughout the popular and business press, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Wired and Fast Company; as well as on NOW with David Brancaccio, NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation and All Things Considered. Working Today has been recognized four times as one of the leading social entrepreneurs by Fast Company magazine.
