Person

Sara Horowitz

Nationality:

American

Occupation:

Labor Activist

Founder and Executive Director, Freelancers Union

Born:

January 13, 1963

Contact InfluenceWatch with suggested edits or tips for additional profiles.

Sara Horowitz is an American attorney and left-of-center non-profit executive currently working as the CEO of Trupo, a for-profit company that provides health, dental, and unemployment insurance to freelancers.

Horowitz previously founded and worked as the executive director for Freelancers Union, a left-of-center advocacy organization which advocates for left-progressive labor issues and provides insurance to member freelancers. 1 She is also co-founder of the left-progressive think tank Demos and began her career in union organizing. 2

Personal Life

Horowitz was born and raised in Brooklyn in a union-centered home. Horowitz is the granddaughter of Israel Horowitz, a vice president of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. Her grandmother, father, and husband are and were all prominent union-side labor lawyers. 3 Horowitz attended Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, a program focused on collective bargaining and other labor issues. She earned her law degree at the University at Buffalo Law School, and her M.P.A. at Harvard University. 4 5

Writing

Horowitz has published many articles covering a wide array of topics ranging from labor to environmentalism. Her work has been published in many left-leaning media outlets such as the New York Times, Huffington Post, Forbes, and Medium. 6

Freelancers Union

Sara Horowitz founded Freelancers Union in 1995. The organization was originally founded to advocate for issues surrounding freelance workers, but has since evolved to advocate for a wide array of left-of-center issues mostly focused on labor, offering labor-related education for members, and to provide financial benefits such as retirement and insurance to members. Horwitz has since stepped away from the organization to focus on her for-profit insurance company, Trupo. 7

Freelancers Insurance Company was a project of Freelancers Union that was shut down in 2014. The project served to provide insurance benefits to members of the Freelancers Union. In 2008, amid concerns of financial stability in the organization, Horowitz released a statement defending the financial viability of the project. Horowitz stated that the organization was backed by a number of left-of-center and liberal organizations. Most notably, Horowitz said that the organization was financially backed by the Ford Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation, all large left-of-center and liberal grantmaking organizations. 8

Trupo

Trupo was founded in 2018 as a way for freelancers to obtain health and unemployment insurance, retirement benefits, and other financial services. Horowitz founded the company as a “safety-net” for freelance workers experiencing financial hardship. In a 2018 article highlighting the organization, Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, one of the largest left-leaning grantmaking organizations in the country, endorsed the company. 9

Working Today

Sara Horowitz is the founder and former executive director for Working Today, an “alt-labor” organization that provides similar services for freelancers to Horowitz’s other ventures. Working Today is funded by a number of left-of-center organizations and municipal governments. Most notably, the organization has received substantial funding from the City of New York; the Ford Foundation; the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; the New York Community Trust, a left-of-center donor-advised fund in New York City; and the Partnership Funds, a large funding collaborative that makes grants promoting liberal economic policy. 10

Career

Horowitz was named a MacArthur Fellow in its class of 1999. 11 The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a left-of-center grantmaking organization that makes millions of dollars of annual grants to left-of-center and liberal organizations. Horowitz used her platform created by her fellowship to publish and publicize articles advocating for collective bargaining and other labor-related issues. 12 Horowitz also served as the deputy chair for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. She also served as a 1996 global fellow for Echoing Green, a left-of-center environmentalist organization. 13

References

  1. “About Sara Horowitz.” Freelancers Union. Accessed October 17, 2020. https://www.freelancersunion.org/about/sara-horowitz/.
  2. Watson, Michael. “Conservatives, Embrace Big Labor at Your Peril.” Capital Research Center. Capital Research Center, March 4, 2020. https://capitalresearch.org/article/conservatives-embrace-big-labor-at-your-peril/.
  3. “Building a new social safety net: Sara Horowitz and the Freelancers Union.” Jewish Women’s Archive. Accessed October 20, 2020. https://jwa.org/blog/building-new-social-safety-net-sara-horowitz-and-freelancers-union.
  4. “1999 Fellows: Sara Horowitz.” MacArthur Foundation. Accessed October 21, 2020. https://www.macfound.org/fellows/611/.
  5. “About Sara Horowitz.” Freelancers Union. Accessed October 17, 2020. https://www.freelancersunion.org/about/sara-horowitz/.
  6. “Sara Horowitz News.” MacArthur Foundation. Accessed October 21, 2020. https://www.macfound.org/fellows/611/news/?page=1#learning-search 
  7. “About Sara Horowitz.” Freelancers Union. Accessed October 17, 2020. https://www.freelancersunion.org/about/sara-horowitz/.
  8. “A Message from Sara Horowitz: Why Should I Trust Freelancers Insurance Company?” Sara Horowitz. Accessed October 21, 2020. https://blog.freelancersunion.org/2008/11/24/a-message-from-sara-why-should-i-trust-freelancers-insurance-company/.
  9. “Meet Trupo: A New Kind of Insurance Company to Offer First-of-its-kind Safety Net to Freelancers.” BusinessWire.com. Accessed October 21, 2020. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180731005286/en/Meet-Trupo-New-Kind-Insurance-Company-Offer.
  10. “About.” Working Today. Accessed October 21, 2020. https://www.workingtoday.org/about
  11. “1999 Fellows: Sara Horowitz.” MacArthur Foundation. Accessed October 21, 2020. https://www.macfound.org/fellows/611/.
  12. “Sara Horowitz News.” MacArthur Foundation. Accessed October 21, 2020. https://www.macfound.org/fellows/611/news/?page=1#learning-search.
  13. “Fellows: Sara Horowitz.” Echoing Green. Accessed October 21, 2020. https://fellows.echoinggreen.org/fellow/sara-horowitz/
  See an error? Let us know!