ANNA GIFTY
OPOKU-AGYEMAN
AWARD-WINNING Economist, AUTHOR, FOUNDER, and speaker
Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman is a doctoral candidate at Harvard Kennedy School studying public policy and economics. Her scholarship examines work, identity, and power. She is a fellow for the National Science Foundation, Ford Foundation, Stone Program in Wealth Distribution, Inequality & Social Policy, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Roosevelt Institute. She is also a graduate affiliate at Harvard Kennedy School's Women and Public Policy Center and the Institute for Quantitative Science.
Her first book, The Black Agenda: Bold Solutions for a Broken System (2022), is the first trade publication to exclusively feature Black scholars and experts across key policy areas. The critically acclaimed book has received praise from politicians, public figures, bestselling authors, and activists. Before publishing The Black Agenda, she co-founded the award-winning digital campaign #BlackBirdersWeek in 2019 and The Sadie Collective—the first non-profit addressing the underrepresentation of Black women in economics and related fields—in 2018. For co-founding The Sadie Collective, she was awarded the CEDAW Women's Human Rights Award from the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women—an honor previously given to Vice President Kamala Harris. To date, she remains the award’s youngest recipient. In 2023, she was named as an honoree among the inaugural Forbes 30 Under 30 Boston cohort.
Her latest book, The Double Tax (PRH/Portfolio and Little, Brown Books UK), is the first book to document the costs women face, why the bill runs higher for women of color, and how closing the gap helps us all. In 2025, The Double Tax was named one of the Best Science Books of the year by The Los Angeles Times. In 2026, The Double Tax won the 18th Annual WOMEN’S WAY Book Prize (formerly the Ernesta Drinker Ballard Book Prize). The book has received widespread coverage and praise from CBS Mornings, NBC News, ABC News, Bloomberg, The New York Times, Marketplace, Forbes, NPR, and more. Opoku-Agyeman’s research and commentary frequently appear in TIME Magazine, Bloomberg, NPR, and The New York Times, among others.
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