Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman, then an undergraduate at University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), and Fanta Traore, then a research assistant at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, co-founded The Sadie Collective after their own personal experiences of being 'the only one' in predominantly white economic institutions. After feeling isolated within the field, the two found community with each other and co-founded The Sadie Collective, the first and only American non-profit organization that addresses the pipeline and pathway problem for Black women in economics, finance, data science, and policy across the world.

 

The  Sadie  Collective is named after  Dr. Sadie  Tanner  Mossell  Alexander,  the first  African American to earn her doctoral degree in economics in  1921  from the  University of Pennsylvania.  Unfortunately,  due to racial barriers that persisted at the time,  she was unable to find work in the economics profession and instead pursued a  career in  law,  holding  a variety  of  positions  such  as  Assistant  City  Solicitor  for  the  City  of  Philadelphia and  President of  John  F.  Kennedy's  Committee  for  Civil  Rights  Under  Law. 

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The organization now aims  bring  together  Black  women  at different  stages  in  their  academic  and/or  professional  careers  in  the  quantitative  sciences  to share  resources,  network,  and  advocate  for  broader  visibility  in  the  field.  The  Collective  strives to  create  safe  spaces  where  Black  women  in  these  fields  can  obtain  the  resources  they  need to  thrive. The  Collective  is  working  to center Black women in the economy while shifting  inequitable  power  structures  that  create  barriers  to  access in  economics  so  that  everyone  can  fully  participate  in  these  fields.