Martha Chen

Martha Chen (née Alter; born February 9, 1944) is an American academic, scholar and social worker, who is presently a lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and senior advisor of the global research-policy-action network WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing) and a member of the Advisory Board of the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER). Martha is a development practitioner and scholar who has worked with the working poor in India, South Asia, and around the world. Her areas of specialization are employment, poverty alleviation, informal economy, and gender. She lived in Bangladesh working with BRAC, one of the world's largest non-governmental organizations, and in India, as field representative of Oxfam America for India and Bangladesh for 15 years. In 2011, she received the Padma Shri from the Government of India for her contributions in the field of social work. She also received the Friends of Bangladesh Liberation War award by the Government of Bangladesh. Early years Martha was born on February 9, 1944, to Barbara and Jim Alter in rural Tennessee. Her family hailed from Ohio in the USA. Martha's grandparents had come to India as missionaries of the Presbyterian church. They pursued their missionary activities in undivided Punjab (mostly in Sialkot and Peshawar) and Martha's father was born in Sialkot. Later on, Martha's paternal grandfather took up a position as headmaster of Woodstock School in Landour, on the outskirts of Mussoorie. Their family settled here. Martha grew up largely in the hills of Mussoorie and Landour and in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand. She was one of three children. Her brothers were Tom Alter, the well-known film and theatre actor, and John Alter. Education She attended Woodstock School from 1948 to 1960. After graduating, she studied for a year at Isabella Thoburn College in Lucknow, India. She then went to the US for her undergraduate and graduate studies, where she received a B.A. Cum Laude (with honors in English literature) from Connecticut College for Women and a PhD in South Asian Studies from the University of Pennsylvania.