Bio

Prarthana Gurung (she/her) is a first-generation daughter of Nepali immigrants, born and raised in the South, and now calls Queens, New York, home. A movement campaigner with almost 15 years of experience, Prarthana is currently the Senior Garment Campaign Organizer at Global Labor Justice, where she brings her campaigns, strategic communications, worker organizing, and sector-based labor approaches to GLJ’s garment team. With GLJ, Prarthana works to build with national, regional, and global partners to innovate enforceable supply chain agreement models that draw from the history of successful worker and union agreements and are adapted to new business models in the global economy.

Before joining GLJ, Prarthana led campaigns and communications at Adhikaar for eight years, the only women-led workers' center organizing low-income Nepali-speaking immigrant women in the nail salon and domestic worker industries. She began her movement journey at Adhikaar in 2012, learning the “ABCs” and “क ख गs” of organizing from the worker leaders whom she lovingly calls "didis," or "elder sisters" in Nepali. There, she led several successful efforts to defend and build immigrant worker power locally in New York City, New York State, and nationally, including the introduction of HR6 (Dream and Promise Act) in Congress for TPS holders and Dreamers, the federal lawsuit *Ramos v. Nielsen* to protect TPS holders against Trump-era terminations, the elimination of the subminimum tipped wage for nail salon workers, the launch of the first-ever Nepali-speaking Nail Salon Workers’ Association, the creation of a historic $1 million NYC budget initiative to fund immigrant women worker organizing, and the groundbreaking introduction of sectoral bargaining legislation for nail salon workers.

Prarthana has also worked with foundations and national nonprofits to support membership organizing, campaign communications, electoral strategy, and grantmaking on topics ranging from civic engagement, anti-fracking, indigenous land rights, public health, and police accountability.

She earned her MA in Labor Studies from the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies and her BA in International Affairs and Political Science from the University of Mary Washington. Prarthana is a proud board member of CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities, a 40-year-old grassroots organization at the epicenter of the Asian American movement that organizes working-class Asian immigrants and youth in New York City neighborhoods on the frontlines of gentrification.