Sushma Sheth is on the frontline of what many see as a testing ground for grassroots mobilizing in Miami and South Florida, one of the country's poorest regions, with substantial disparity in wealth.

Graduating from Brown University in 2001, Sheth joined the Miami Worker's Center in 2002 as a New Voices Fellow. Only five years old, the Miami Workers Center has been instrumental in developing a broad-based social justice movement that is giving historically marginalized people in South Florida a more powerful voice in demanding social equality.

According to Sheth, the New Voices Fellowship has enabled the Miami Worker’s Center to get “some publicity for work that is being done in a city that's off the social justice map in many ways. …that's really important because non-traditional cities have been able to come up with some non-traditional methods that have a lot to bring to the social justice movement. I am excited that New Voices has given us a platform at the Worker's Center to put out our ideas and our work."

As the center's Media, Research, and Policy Director, Sheth has strengthened one of the center's most significant achievements: the initiation and development of the grassroots organization Low Income Families Fighting Together (LIFFT). Led by welfare recipients, low-wage workers and public housing residents, LIFFT has quickly become a growing force in Miami-Dade County fighting for state resources through grassroots organizing and political education. Recent fights have centered on affordable housing, filling public housing vacancies, and alleviating expenses such as childcare and transportation for welfare recipients and low-wage workers

Sheth has brought energy, important skills and new ideas to the Center's innovative approach to grassroots organizing and empowerment. Her influential report, New Hope: A Community proposal for the Scott Carver Hope VI Project, assisted residents of Florida's largest housing project to gain concessions for better living conditions.

Even before joining the Miami Worker's Center as a New Voices Fellow, Sheth had begun social justice work, organizing Indian youth to address the spread of HIV/AIDS among Indian youth in three cities. New Voices, she said, has helped her to continue and refine her mission as an organizer and social change advocate.