Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman with Cortney Sanders: “The Double Tax”
Gerald R. Ford School, Weill Hall Annenberg Auditorium (Room 1120), 735 S State St
2026 Mullin Welch Lecture and
Twink Frey Visiting Social Activist Project Presentation
Join us for a fireside chat with Cortney Sanders, and Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman, PhD student in Economics and Public Policy at Harvard, and author of the recently published book, “The Double Tax: How Women of Color are Overcharged and Underpaid.” “The Double Tax,” her second book, explores the costs women face, why the bill runs higher for women of color, and why closing the gaps helps everyone.
A reception and book signing will take place in the Rebecca M. Blank Great Hall after the talk. The first 50 attendees at the event will receive a free copy of “The Double Tax.”
Speakers
Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman is a doctoral candidate at Harvard Kennedy School studying public policy and economics. She is a doctoral fellow for the National Science Foundation, Ford Foundation, Center for Black Entrepreneurship, Roosevelt Institute, Russell Sage Foundation, and Stone Program in Wealth Distribution, Inequality & Social Policy, and a graduate affiliate at Harvard Kennedy School’s Women and Public Policy Center and the Institute for Quantitative Science.
Opoku-Agyeman co-founded The Sadie Collective in 2018—the first non-profit addressing the underrepresentation of Black women in economics and related fields. The youngest recipient of the CEDAW Women’s 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—her writing and commentary appear in TIME, Bloomberg, NPR, and The New York Times.
“The Double Tax: How Women of Color Are Overcharged and Underpaid,” her second book, explores the costs women face, why the bill runs higher for women of color, and why closing the gaps helps everyone. 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 economics, education, health, climate, criminal justice, and technology.
Cortney Sanders (MPP 2017) is the 2026 Twink Frey Visiting Social Activist (TFVSA), a program at the U-M Center for the Education of Women+ that brings to campus social justice activists whose work affects women and recognizes gender equity issues. One goal of the program is to build the capacity and effectiveness of social activists by giving them time, space, and support to work on a project that would not be possible under the activists’ usual working circumstances.
Sanders’s project is called, “The Future She Deserves: Collectively Confronting Labor Market Discrimination to Improve Women’s Retirement Security & Longevity.” Prior to the talk with Opoku-Agyeman, she will present resources to equip advocates, policy professionals, and community members with concrete strategies to advance retirement equity.
Sanders currently serves as the Institute Director of the National Jobs for All Network housed at the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy at The New School in New York. She previously held senior roles at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, D.C., where she focused on state fiscal policy, and at the U.S. Social Security Administration, where she led efforts to examine labor market barriers and retirement outcomes. Her TFVSA project expands on these efforts.
Sam Scipio is the Creative Lead at the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy and a design consultant with over a decade of experience in design strategy, graphic facilitation, and visual notetaking. A Detroit-based designer with a love of translating complex ideas into clear narrative and imagery, she enjoys learning and building for the sake of bettering the collective.
This event is co-sponsored by the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.
The Mullin Welch Lecture is named for Elizabeth Charlotte Mullin Welch. The CEW+ Mullin Welch Series was established in 1989 by Frances Daseler and Marjorie Jackson in memory of their sister Elizabeth Charlotte Mullin Welch. This fund brings to campus outstanding women who exemplify Elizabeth’s characteristics: creativity, strength of character, and expansive vision. CEW+ thanks the families of Marjorie Jackson and Frances Daseler for making this lecture series possible.
The CEW+ Twink Frey Visiting Social Activist (TFVSA) program, funded by U-M alumna Twink Frey and her husband James McKay, supports a social activist whose work affects women and recognizes gender equity issues. Interactions between TFVSAs and the U-M community nurture a “scholar-activist” mindset in academia as well as in social justice organizations. Activists use their time in Ann Arbor to research, plan and create a product (e.g., report, strategy, video) to advance their work on behalf of women.