Sara Horowitz is a practicing mutualist. The daughter of a labor lawyer and the granddaughter of a former vice president of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, she is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and the Eugene V. Debs Award for her pioneering work supporting the needs of part time, independent, and freelance workers.
In 1995 she founded Working Today, the nonprofit that became the Freelancers Union. For over twenty five years, the Freelancers Union has been an anchor of a mutualist ecosystem that built a political coalition around working freelancers, who are left out of most labor legislation and are the vanguard of today’s changing economy. The Freelancers Union created the Freelancers Insurance Company, a portable benefits solution for independent workers; created Spark, a mutualist network of local resources for freelancers all over the country; led the successful “Freelancer Isn’t Free” campaign in New York City, resulting in landmark legislation preventing wage theft for independent workers; and continues its advocacy work on behalf of freelancers to this day.
Sara served as the Chair of the Board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. She has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Wired, The Atlantic, Fast Company, and National Public Radio’s “Talk of the Nation” and “All Things Considered.”
Sara is a lifelong resident of Brooklyn, NY.