THE FUTURE OF ECONOMICS
IS A BLACK WOMAN.
In 2018, Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman and Fanta Traore co-founded The Sadie Collective to address the lack of Black Women in economics, finance, data science, and policy.
2018
Fanta Traore and Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman co-found The Sadie Collective
Inaugural Sadie T.M. Alexander Conference for Economics and Related Fields at Mathematica Now
2019
2020
Sadie Collective partners with Chicago Federal Reserve Bank on nationwide workshop
2021
The Sadie Collective begins partnering with The Urban Institute on Sadie T.M. Alexander Conferences for Economics and Related Fields
Fanta Traore becomes CEO and Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman remains on as Chair of new Advisory Board
The Sadie Collective
partners with the
Gates Foundation
Meet The Co-Founders
Our Story
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. Inspired by the work of, Dr. Rhonda Vonshay Sharpe, who shared that Black women are missing from economics coupled with their experiences in economics, the two women co-founded The Sadie Collective, the first and only American non-profit organization that address 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.
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.