Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman is a doctoral student at Harvard University studying public policy and economics. Her research focuses broadly on race, gender, and the economy. She specifically uses experiments and administrative data to study how identity shapes the future of work. Her latest co-authored academic publication, published in AEA Papers and Proceedings, explores how the presence of Black supervisors can shift beliefs about Black workers’ productivity. Forbes and Black Enterprise recently featured the paper. Her ongoing work also explores how identity shapes hiring for small businesses and the role identity plays in shaping academic careers.

She is a doctoral fellow at the National Science Foundation, Ford Foundation, and the Stone Program in Wealth Distribution, Inequality & Social Policy. She has also received fellowships from Harvard Kennedy School's Women and Public Policy Center and the Roosevelt Institute, where she was their inaugural graduate fellow. Her research is currently supported by Pivotal Ventures, JPAL North America, the Russell Sage Foundation, The Policy Academies, and the Center for Black Entrepreneurship, among others. In 2025, she earned Harvard Kennedy School’s highest teaching awards: Dean’s Excellence in Student Teaching and Distinction in Student Teaching. Since then, she has guest-lectured and given distinguished lectures at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy, Spelman College, and Williams College.

In 2019, Anna Gifty graduated from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County with a B.A. in Mathematics and a minor in Economics. In 2025, she earned her M.A. in  Public Policy from Harvard University. Prior to Harvard, she worked at the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The Urban Institute, and PNC Bank. She co-founded and served as CEO of The Sadie Collective, a nonprofit organization expanding the talent pipeline in economics and related fields.