Across the U.S., 2.2 million domestic workers — the majority of whom are immigrants and women of color — care for our homes, children, and elders. In a largely informal sector where protections are rare and expectations are often unspoken, domestic workers face unpredictable jobs and inconsistent pay. Without HR or legal backup, they’re left to navigate problems alone and often in a second language.
The National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA), the nation’s leading advocate for domestic workers, saw an opportunity to change that. In partnership with NDWA, The Holding Co., and Blackbird.ai, we designed Ask Aya: a first-of-its-kind AI-powered chatbot that offers workers real-time support. Trained on NDWA’s trusted resources and rooted in worker experience, Ask Aya serves as an accessible coach, helping workers advocate for themselves with language, confidence, and clarity, exactly when they need it.
In September 2025, NDWA made a commitment at the Clinton Global Initiative to bring 220,000 domestic workers in the US (10% of the workforce) onto the platform by 2027, solidifying the tool’s role in their broader strategy to unlock economic opportunity and workplace protections for domestic workers.
Identifying a critical need and a clear gap
Across interviews, focus groups, and surveys with NDWA members and unaffilifated domestic workers one question kept surfacing: Could NDWA help them negotiate better working conditions and pay?
In a diary study, only 13% of participants reported a week without workplace tension. Past misunderstandings around responsibilities, hours, or pay shaped their daily discomfort and made future conversations even harder to navigate. Many of the women we spoke with wanted support they could tap into immediately. While resources are available—from NDWA sample contracts to labor rights explainers on state agency websites—they’re scattered, hard to parse through, and difficult to put to use in the moment. What was missing was something simple, centralized, and built for real life.
With decades of trusted organizing experience and a well of internal knowledge, NDWA was uniquely positioned to close this gap. The organization already had the foundational content workers needed for negotiation and personal advocacy. By designing the solution as an AI-powered chatbot, they could repackage and scale that content into a format that was accessible, easy to use, and met with genuine excitement from both members and non-members during testing.
A pocket-sized coach available whenever, wherever
By the time we built our first prototype, ChatGPT had become a household name. Most domestic workers we spoke to had some familiarity with AI chat tools—often through their children. That mainstream exposure eased skepticism and helped make the idea of a chatbot feel more approachable.
In testing, Ask Aya wowed nearly everyone. Even those unsure about using an AI chatbot walked away surprised by how human, helpful, and immediate the experience felt. What made Aya stand out wasn’t just the technology, it was the experience.
While Ask Aya was designed to exclusively reference on NDWA’s extensive policy and organizing resources, we designed the interaction to feel personal, supportive, and easy to navigate. Rather than echoing the tone of a handbook, Aya offers responses that are empathetic and constructive. Each interaction is tailored to the worker’s situation and offers 2–3 clear options, each with example scripts that make it easier to communicate needs directly to an employer. Additional resources are offered at the end of the chat, if relevant.
Aya’s interface is designed with care, too. When workers log back in to use the chatbot, Aya can reference earlier conversations to maintain continuity and reduce friction of having to reintroduce past issues. We also prioritized feedback loops. At the end of a conversation, workers can rate responses with a thumbs up or down, signaling where the bot was helpful or where it fell short.
In an unregulated industry where the majority of workers are left to advocate for themselves, Ask Aya offers a trusted coach—meeting people in high-stakes moments and supporting them in building more equitable working conditions over time. As NDWA continues to grow its digital membership platform, Ask Aya will serve as a flagship feature—anchoring a broader ecosystem of tools, resources, and opportunities designed to help domestic workers build dignified careers and lasting power.
