This week the National Partnership for Women & Families announced Erika Moritsugu as vice president for Economic Justice. She will officially take over the role full time on Oct. 1. Moritsugu currently serves as the vice president of Government Relations, Advocacy, and Community Engagement (GRACE) at the ADL (Anti-Defamation League). She has spent much of her career working on Capitol Hill and within governmental agencies.
Moritsugu comes to the National Partnership as the organization transitions its Workplace team into an Economic Justice team. The National Partnership recognizes that focusing solely on workplace policy without getting to the root causes of inequality including institutional racism, sexism and implicit bias fails to lift up all women. Economic Justice recognizes the expansion of gig jobs and insecure work in this economy and that many women, including incarcerated women, older women and domestic workers, are overlooked by policies that don’t acknowledge their whole lives.
“We are thrilled to have Erika — who has committed her career to public service and social justice — leading our team during this time of important and exciting change,” said National Partnership President Debra L. Ness. “She has dedicated her work and life to fighting discrimination and inequality and we are fortunate to have her at the helm of the Economic Justice team as we refocus our work to achieve economic stability and security for all people — particularly women of color and other marginalized communities that often are excluded from the institution of work.”
While the organization will continue to serve as an expert and leader on paid leave, paid sick days, equal pay, pregnancy discrimination and workplace harassment, the National Partnership’s Economic Justice team, under Moritsugu’s leadership, will intentionally focus on these issues as economic justice issues and will work to expand coalitions with women of color led organizations who have been leading on justice work.
Prior to joining ADL, Moritsugu served in the Obama administration as the assistant secretary for congressional and intergovernmental relations at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, as well as the first deputy assistant director for Senate legislative affairs at the newly-established Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
On Capitol Hill, she served as U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth’s general counsel, was deputy legislative director for U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), and held several different roles at the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, including acting staff director and policy director under former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
