The MacArthur Foundation named the 2014 class of MacArthur Fellows, commonly referred to as the “genius grants.” This year’s class of 21 Fellows announced Wednesday includes New Haven native Ai-Jen Poo. Also winning a grant is Mary Bonauto, who served as co-counsel in the case that brought marriage equality to Connecticut in 2009.
In a statement, the MacArthur Foundation credits Ai-Jen Poo with "catalyzing a grassroots, worker-led movement for better conditions and protections for in-home workers (i.e. nannies, housekeepers, caregivers for the elderly and disabled), an industry dominated by women."
"It's long hours and then it's low wages," Poo said in a video provided by the Foundation. "There [are] wonderful employers who want to do the right thing and we've just not established what that is."
Poo graduated in 1989 from the Foote School, a private institution in New Haven.
Also winning a grant was civil rights lawyer Mary Bonauto, who was co-counsel in the 2008 Connecticut Supreme Court case Kerrigan v. Department of Public Health, which ruled that denying same-sex couples the right to marry was unconstitutional.
Earlier this year, Massachusetts marked the ten-year anniversary of legalizing gay marriage. Bonauto was the lawyer who argued this case. NPR interviewed Bonauto about the protests that resulted from that decision.
"There were times I felt despairing, knowing the vile, vile things that people said. I just felt like this is going to be such a slog, getting to state number two was so difficult," said Bonauto. State number two was Connecticut.
There is no application process for the MacArthur Fellowship, and each recipient is given a $635,000 grant with no-strings-attached, paid out over five years. More than 900 grants have been awarded since the program started in 1981.