Palak Shah is the Social Innovations Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and the Founding Director of NDWA Labs, the innovation arm of the domestic worker movement. Palak is a leader in the movement for workers’ rights in the new economy, a thought leader on the future of work, and a social entrepreneur. Her groundbreaking work wrestles with the ways in which technology continues to disrupt entire systems, including the way we access work and our livelihoods, and how it can be harnessed for the benefit of workers, placing them at the center of innovation and change.

At NDWA and NDWA Labs, Palak is focused on ensuring the future of work does not leave workers behind. She leads national strategy on engaging private sector companies entering the domestic work industry and organizing workers who are increasingly migrating online to find employment. In 2015, she founded NDWA Labs to experiment with new ways to use technology products to improve job access and job quality for these workers. In 2018, NDWA Labs launched Alia, the nation’s first portable benefits platform that finally expands the social safety net to independent workers, starting with domestic workers. 

As a sought-after media commentator on the future of work and labor issues in the new economy, she has spoken at TEDx, NPR Boston’s IdeaLab, and Personal Democracy Forum. She currently serves on the Advisory Council for the Institute for the Cooperative Digital Economy, as well as the Institute for the Future’s Equitable Futures Lab.  From 2018-2020, Palak was a Beck Visiting Social Innovator at Harvard’s Social Innovation and Change Initiative. In 2017, Palak was awarded an inaugural Aspen Institute Job Quality Fellowship, where she was able to collaborate with leaders of other social movements on expanding the availability of quality work throughout the economy. She has previously served as an advisor for Blue Ridge Labs and a Board Member of Carina Care.