I almost didn’t go to the interview for the job at Planned Parenthood. At the time, I was running America Votes in Washington, DC, and there was a lot on my plate. When you run an organization, everything stops at your desk: hiring, fundraising, interoffice politics. We were a shoestring start-up, so even considering another job came with enormous guilt. As a master worrier, I immediately went there: Who else would take this on? What about all the organizers around the country who were counting on me to raise the money to keep it all going?
I was sitting in my office downtown when the search firm called to see if I’d be interested in taking over as president of Planned Parenthood. My first thought was Are you kidding? Ellen Chesler, whom I had met while working on reproductive rights for Ted Turner and Jane Fonda, had put my name forward. Ellen is a writer, historian, and public policy expert known for her book, Woman of Valor, the definitive biography of Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger. She and I had been co-conspirators and good friends, reminding me yet again that you never know who will change the course of your life. I also knew Gloria Feldt, the outgoing president, so I had an inkling of what an enormous undertaking this would be.
I called Kirk. “Okay,” I said, “I know we just finally bought a house in Washington, and the kids are settled at school, but the folks from Planned Parenthood just called. They want to know if I might be interested in applying for the job as president.”
Kirk has always been the most supportive, positive person in my life. Sometimes I think that if I called and said we needed to pack up and go to Mars, he would just ask, “What do I need to bring?”
“That sounds great! I love New York!” was his response. He knew the job was huge and complicated, but he pushed me to go for it.
A couple of weeks later I was standing in front of my closet, trying to pick out the right outfit to wear for the biggest moment of my professional career. At every other job I’d had, I was creating something new—Planned Parenthood was a huge organization with a hundred-year legacy.
The interview was at an office building a few minutes away from America Votes, where I would meet with the national search committee—which in and of itself sounded overwhelming. I went to a nearby coffee shop to gather my thoughts, but instead I freaked out.
I started running through my list of “why nots”: This is the wrong time. My kids are still in school. We could never move. Here I was, barely in the first round of interviews, already worrying about what would happen if I got the job. I was on the verge of calling the search firm and telling them I’d take a pass.
Instead I did what any grown woman would do: I called my mom.
I told her what I was about to do, then immediately launched into all the reasons I wasn’t the person for the job: The political climate was brutal. I’d never run anything this big before, let alone an established organization that millions of people counted on for health care each year. Why on earth would they even consider me for the position?
Mom was just not having it. I’m sure she was thinking about all of the women she’d known who’d sabotaged themselves because of fear and self-doubt, and she wasn’t about to let me off easily. “Cecile, you will never know unless you try. And let’s face it: You only get one life, and this is it. Besides, Planned Parenthood is doing more for women’s health than any organization in America! How exciting!”
Her voice still rings in my head, asking, “What’s the worst thing that could happen?” She was right. I could try for it and not get the job; I could handle that. Or I could get the job and be a colossal failure, which would be pretty bad, but even then I’d eventually get over it and do something else.
Though I was sure I’d never get the job, I showed up for the interview and found ten people sitting around the conference table, ready to ask questions. I didn’t know any of them personally, but Mom’s advice had calmed me down. And besides, knowing deep down that this was a long shot actually helped—I felt like I had nothing to lose.
I loved the search committee right away. One of the members was a legend in the world of reproductive rights, Jill June. She ran Planned Parenthood in Iowa, and though she looked like a kindly grandmother, she was as fearless as they came. “We’re the very best at what we do, providing reproductive health care for women,” she explained. “But we keep losing ground in the political arena, and we can’t count on another organization to fix it for us. We need to get back to our movement roots. Are you interested?”
It was clear to me that the job would have a steep learning curve. On the other hand, I could be a good partner in a lot of the things they wanted to do. I was more than interested.
Having worked with Planned Parenthood across the country at America Votes and in Leader Pelosi’s office, I knew firsthand the incredible depth of commitment and relationships they had. One in five women in America has been to Planned Parenthood for health care, and that great alumni association of current and former patients was an enormous asset. During Gloria’s tenure I had served on the national Planned Parenthood Action Fund board and seen the challenges of building up the advocacy arm of the organization. Planned Parenthood was busy providing excellent health care, and was overdue for some serious investments in the grassroots movement for women’s health.
We had a great conversation, and when Patricio Gonzales, a Planned Parenthood leader serving women on the Rio Grande border in Texas, spoke of the struggles to provide services in an area of the country I knew so well, he touched my heart. So many women in the Rio Grande Valley depended on Planned Parenthood for health care, and if they lost it—which was definitely a possibility—Patricio was afraid they would go over the border to Mexico. (Those fears would become a reality years later, when politicians in Texas forced health centers across the state to close, giving some women no choice but to leave the state for birth control and abortions.)
I left the interview thinking, This could be really exciting. So you might think I was thrilled to get the call saying they wanted me back for a second interview. Oh no: I went through all the same anxieties, only this time they were worse. Now it seemed like I really might get the job—and then what? I was terrified.
Somehow I gutted up and showed up again. They were definitely interested. The search firm called me almost immediately after I left that interview and made me an offer. When I hesitated, the woman on the other end of the phone jumped right in. “How are you not going to do this?” she asked.
She was right. I took the leap and said yes, having only the slightest idea what I was stepping into.
I knew Kirk was ready to go to New York; we’d had plenty of Washington. But I still had to break it to the kids. Hannah and I were driving in the car when I decided to tell her. Why is it always in the car where the most difficult conversations happen with teenagers?
“Hannah, I know how happy you are here in Washington, but I decided to take the job with Planned Parenthood.” Gulp. Silence.
“You and Daniel can finish out ninth grade, but I’ll go on up to New York and find us a place to live. It will be great, though I know it’s a big change.”
In her younger years Hannah was the master of the silent treatment, and this was no exception. In contrast to her tears at age six when we left Texas, this time she sat there like a stone. I have a terrible habit of filling any silence, so I kept talking. “Just think—you can meet all kinds of new people and go to a new school. And your friends will definitely come and visit!”
Eventually she came around, but it wasn’t easy. It would be years before we could look back on this move, like all our others, and agree it was the right thing for us as a family.
Besides being worried about the kids, I was also concerned about leaving my job and my staff. After all, I’d started the organization, and it felt like a betrayal to leave it and those good people behind. I took Beth Ganz, our chief of staff, out to coffee and said I had some tough news to tell her. She looked stricken. She had moved from Denver to Washington to take the job at America Votes. “Okay, go ahead,” she said nervously.
“I’m taking the job at Planned Parenthood,” I said.
She was silent for a minute. Then she burst out, “I thought you were about to fire me!”
What is it about us women?
Once I’d accepted the job and gotten the word out, several things started happening at once. I had to find a place for us to live and a place for the kids to go to school, neither of which is a small feat in a new town. I felt like Mrs. Mallard in Make Way for Ducklings, searching out a safe spot for the family in New York City. In the meantime I was also training for a marathon with my friend Maggie. I’d never run one in my life, but running so much during the transition helped keep my head together. Come race day, I was definitely not the best-prepared marathoner, but Maggie and I finished the race, with Daniel running the last mile alongside me.
Part of the routine for a new Planned Parenthood leader is to have a security team evaluate their physical safety, I’m sorry to say. Because we’d be staying in Washington for a while, our house there had to be inspected. Daniel, at least, was excited to have a security team around, looking for any sign of vulnerability, showing us maps of where we were vis-à-vis crime statistics in the District of Columbia. I’d never had a job where security was part of the daily routine but quickly realized this was standard practice for Planned Parenthood CEOs around the country. It didn’t give me pause, but I realized that life with Planned Parenthood required a different level of awareness—for me, the kids, and Kirk. And I would come to learn that making sure your house is secure isn’t a lot of help once you start getting recognized in public. More than once I’ve been accosted on the street or at an airport, like the time a man—and they are almost always men—walked up as I was sitting at the gate, told me he was praying for me, and handed me a completely nutty self-published religious book. He stood there for what felt like forever, and all I could think was How can I possibly get myself out of here?
Meanwhile, through a friend of Gloria Feldt, I had found something unheard-of in New York: a rental apartment big enough for the five of us. I brought Kirk and the kids up for the weekend to check it out. We were right in the middle of Manhattan, near a public school that the kids liked and I hoped they could get into. I was so excited when we got off the subway that I went up to the local coffee cart outside our building, ubiquitous in the city. I greeted the coffee vendor with a big smile and said, “Hi, we’re moving in right here! I’m Cecile, and this is my family!” That’s me. You can take the girl out of Texas, but you can’t take Texas out of the girl! The guy looked at me like I had lost my mind. Though he didn’t say the words, his expression clearly communicated, Lady, I serve coffee to a few hundred folks every day. How about you just give me your orders? You take it black or with cream? Welcome to New York City!
The kids and Kirk were back in Washington when I started my new job. I had asked if I could have a meeting with the entire Planned Parenthood staff right away. Our communications director, Elizabeth Toledo, was skeptical. “I’m not sure you want to do that,” she counseled. “You just got here, and they probably have all kinds of questions you aren’t ready for.”
Elizabeth was right, of course. She was and is an incredible communications expert, but I didn’t know it at the time. I insisted on the meeting.
I got there early Monday morning, ready to go. Staff started assembling on the top floor, probably a hundred or so. Most were people I’d yet to meet. I said hello, introduced myself, and told them how excited I was to work with them and for Planned Parenthood. Then I asked if there were any questions.
Right off the bat, Jon Knowles stood up. Jon was a veteran at Planned Parenthood—a sex educator, writer, and editor, with a long ponytail and a beard. His office, I later learned, was the repository of every phallic replica in the place—a penis gallery! He cut right to the chase: “I was wondering, what’s your plan to make sexual pleasure a universal value in the United States?”
I’m sure my expression was like the squirrel in the movie Ice Age: huge eyes and utter shock. “Okay, well, you’ve got me there, Jon. I’m going to have a lot to learn from you!”
That was just the beginning. The minute I said yes to the job, I knew my life was about to change in a million ways. This was one: when you work for Planned Parenthood, you spend more time talking about sex than you could possibly imagine. It comes up in meetings and emails—like the day a note came around from the organization’s librarian, who wrote, “Will whoever took our last copy of Anal Pleasure and Health by Jack Morin please return it to the 11th floor?” Almost immediately hilarious replies started flooding in: “I’m still trying to master Chapter 12, but will return it as soon as I do!” I was definitely not working at the Capitol anymore!
My whole life I’ve tried to take jobs where I could learn something, and I definitely had a lot to learn at Planned Parenthood. It was sink or swim, and my only hope of swimming was to know what I didn’t know: running the business side of an organization with a presence in every state and navigating America’s convoluted system of health care delivery, among other things. It was humbling to admit, but necessary. Whether in politics or organizing, the best leaders are the ones who are always searching out new talent and bringing people on board who challenge them to be better. It was clear from day one that this was what I needed to do.
Mom was always full of advice, and one of the most brilliant ideas she had as I was getting ready to work at Planned Parenthood was to introduce me to a young woman from Texas she had met years earlier, Maryana Iskander. Maryana was barely thirty, but she had already done more than most people accomplish in their lifetime. A Yale law graduate, Rhodes Scholar, and all-around genius, she was living in Houston and working for the president of Rice University. I called her on the phone and said that I was going to be taking this job and needed a partner.
Maryana is the polar opposite of me: she’s calm, thoughtful, and logical. We agreed that she would come up to Washington and have dinner. “It will be clear after that whether or not this is a good idea,” she said. (Years later we gave her a Yoda statue for her office. She was always the wise one.)
We met at the Bombay Club in Washington and talked about this improbable job I was about to start. Would she be interested in coming with me? I knew enough about taking on big jobs to know that having a partner was an absolute must, someone to jump off the high dive with me.
Thank goodness for whatever inner message she received that night, because next thing I knew, Maryana had packed up and moved to New York City to take the job of executive vice president. She became my most trusted partner for the next several years. We did everything together, from hiring a new leadership team to crafting a strategic plan for the organization. It was a lesson that would get me through so many moments when I felt in over my head: Never be afraid to hire people who are smarter than you.
• • •
Even with Maryana on board, getting started was overwhelming. Neither of us had ever worked for Planned Parenthood, so we had a lot to learn. The early days were brutal, and we had a lot of late nights. I was on a first-name basis with the building’s cleaning staff, who came in after hours, when I was one of the last ones still sitting at the computer. There were a million tasks: roles to fill, financial decisions to make, relationships to establish in Washington, donors to meet from all over the country. It wasn’t remotely glamorous; we were working seven days a week. One evening, when Maryana and I were sitting in my office going through a massive to-do list after everyone else had gone home, she turned to me and said, “You know, at my last job, it was the president who left, and everyone else stayed and worked.” Not us—we had too much to do!
As soon as I took the job, my kids became the go-to sources of information about Planned Parenthood for their peers. Lily, who had left for college in Massachusetts, suddenly found that high school friends everywhere were reaching out to her, looking for a place to get birth control or a way to be in touch with Planned Parenthood. She called me in October that first year. “Mom, Sarah just called me because a friend needs to get birth control. Do you know where the closest place is in Indianapolis?” I went to look up our clinic information and it dawned on me: there had to be a better way for us to be there for young people. I couldn’t call back every college student in the United States, nor did most of them know to call Lily.
At the time, Planned Parenthood had a national website, but it was exclusively focused on activism. If you were trying to find birth control in, say, Oklahoma City, it would have been a challenge. Being able to get first-rate health care information or find a health center 24/7 was at the core of our mission. I knew if we got it right, the internet and Planned Parenthood could be a match made in heaven. I just wasn’t sure where to start.
A lot of hardworking people—especially women—fall into the trap of thinking, “If I just stay at the office all night, I can do it all myself.” Those first months at Planned Parenthood quickly put any such thoughts to rest. There were jobs I just could not do, no matter how late I worked or how committed I was. To build the kind of organization I envisioned, I’d need to find people who had talent and expertise in areas I knew next to nothing about. Then I’d need to step back and let them do their thing.
Fortunately I had met a guy working as a consultant for Planned Parenthood in Boston who was as excited about the possibilities of the internet as I was. Tom Subak was happily living his life, but I told him he had a bigger job to do: we needed his skills and drive to build a website that could take Planned Parenthood into the twenty-first century.
Tom and I came from the same organizing background. He had spent years working for the Public Interest Research Group, those people who come up to you on the street and ask if you have a minute to answer a survey on the environment. Tom’s training told him that our first step was to ask folks what they wanted from us, and then work to deliver it.
As we suspected, about 95 percent of the visitors to our website were looking for something we were not providing: a way to find the closest Planned Parenthood health center. But convincing the whole federation that we could do more together than apart, especially when it came to the online world, flew in the face of long-standing traditions. At that point we had 128 local affiliates of Planned Parenthood, and everyone did things their own way. For example, longtime Planned Parenthood CEO in Houston, Peter Durkin, was appalled that local leaders in San Francisco talked about sex in a way that could scandalize his supporters in Texas.
“Here’s the thing, Peter,” I told him. “The internet has changed everything. What we say in California has to be what we say in the South. We’re going to have to come together and figure out how to be consistent.” He looked unsure, but was willing to give it a try.
Convincing folks that the need to connect with millions more people online was an opportunity, not a threat, took some doing. Planned Parenthood was started by troublemaking, fiercely independent leaders all across the country, and the last thing they wanted was the national offices in New York and Washington telling them what to do. Plus, people who are born to challenge authority do it every chance they get—including in their own organization. But Tom, along with a dedicated group of Planned Parenthood CEOs, made it happen. Those early investments and painstaking efforts have allowed us to build the only national reproductive rights website that receives more than 72 million visits a year, lets patients make appointments on their mobile phones day or night, and provides health information twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, in English and Spanish.
Meanwhile Planned Parenthood’s most important work was happening at health centers across America. I was itching to get out of our office and get to know the organization from a different perspective. Dawn Laguens, a longtime friend and back then a strategy consultant for Planned Parenthood, helped me design a “thirty-day dialogue,” so that I could spend a month hearing from staff and volunteers across the country. It was an early glimpse of life on the road, which would become my new normal for the next decade. The stories I heard and the people I met would inform some of the most important decisions I had to make in the early days—decisions about the investments we needed to make in the future of Planned Parenthood.
An energetic staff member named Amy Taylor was game to go with me. Together we saw a lot of the country that first month, from Minnesota to Florida. Local Planned Parenthood CEOs welcomed me, gave me the lay of the land, and arranged for me to spend a day at their health centers, listening to their staff and volunteers.
There was so much to learn and see for myself—most important, the kind of heroic work that was taking place in the states. As Jill June had mentioned back in my first job interview, Planned Parenthood leaders were not only providing health care but were also battling daily to protect access to all the services Planned Parenthood provides.
One important battle was the fight for safe, legal abortion in South Dakota, one of the most conservative states in the country. The local Planned Parenthood CEO, Sarah Stoesz, had an essential combination of skills: she knew a lot about political organizing from her early days with Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, and she had experience delivering first-class health care in some of the most remote, and most politically challenging, areas of the country.
Just as I arrived, the South Dakota legislature passed a bill making all abortion illegal, full stop. It looked hopeless. Our folks on the ground were tirelessly working to keep the Planned Parenthood health center in Sioux Falls up and running. It was the only location in the state for access to safe and legal abortion, and folks wanted to know what Planned Parenthood was going to do.
“We have got to fight this on the ground,” Sarah told me. “What they’re trying to do is clearly unconstitutional, but rather than go to court, we have the right to take this unconscionable law straight to the voters in South Dakota and convince them to overturn it. That’s what we need to do.”
It sounded crazy to me. After all, if the law was unconstitutional, why not sue? But Sarah disagreed. “This is an opportunity to fundamentally challenge the belief that people in South Dakota—people anywhere, for that matter—want abortion to be illegal. I know it’ll be hard to win, but we have to try. Litigation should be our last resort.”
Sarah was persuasive and, as it turned out, completely right. She collected the signatures to get the law on the ballot and raised the money for a statewide repeal effort. She hired and trained organizers to go door to door in South Dakota, explaining to voters that this legislation would take the right away from women and their families to make important decisions about pregnancy. Sarah took me to visit the health center in Sioux Falls, where courageous staff continued to provide care for women. We also met some of the organizers on the campaign; these young women were undaunted. After talking to complete strangers about abortion in South Dakota, they could do anything.
Sarah was the first to show me that people are capable of holding two important ideas at the same time. “A person may have their own deeply felt opinion about abortion,” she explained. “They may not believe it is a choice they would make. But they are also able to respect the decisions that each woman, or family, may make themselves.” In fact a mother who ended up making a television ad for the campaign reflected just that. She and her husband had been overjoyed to learn that she was pregnant with twins. But after discovering a serious medical complication, they made the tough decision to terminate one of the pregnancies so the other twin could survive. She had never been an activist before, but she decided that if telling her story could help someone else, it was worth it.
When the voters in South Dakota went to the polls, they voted down the legislation overwhelmingly. What Sarah believed was proven true not only on that Election Day but subsequently on a second effort in South Dakota, another in Mississippi, two ballot measures in North Dakota, and yet again in defeating so-called personhood initiatives in Colorado. It just goes to show: people’s ability to respect a woman’s right to make her own decisions about a pregnancy, including abortion, just might surprise you.
• • •
I was learning so much about the work of the organization and the people at its heart. In one day I would visit with young teen sex educators in East Los Angeles in the morning, and sit next to a business leader at dinner, listening to her declare that Planned Parenthood was the reason she had been able to finish college and have a family and career.
One of the best-kept secrets about Planned Parenthood is that it is the largest provider of sex education in America. For so many young people, it is their only source of honest, nonjudgmental information about their bodies and their lives. Planned Parenthood educators are out on the front lines, where often no one else is.
One of the first educators I met was Irwin Royster, a young man who was running Planned Parenthood’s Ophelia Egypt Health Clinic in Anacostia, Maryland, right across the river from DC. Irwin was like the pied piper of Anacostia. There, in the shadow of the nation’s capital, with the highest rate of HIV infection in the country, he ran an after-school program connected with the Planned Parenthood clinic. He had convinced a small strip mall to give him an abandoned sporting goods storefront, which he filled with secondhand furniture and cast-off computers. (I would later donate our foosball table to the cause.)
Working twenty-hour days, with barely two nickels to rub together, Irwin and his team helped high-risk teens in the area get testing, counseling, and health care. Most of all, he was providing young people in Anacostia with a safe place to go after school. Some of these teens became educators themselves and were a lifeline for their fellow students. I started getting excited about the opportunity to connect these young people to others across the country.
It was in Kalamazoo, Michigan (home of Kellogg’s), after the obligatory stop to get a photo with a life-size Tony the Tiger (part of a complete breakfast—Daniel would be so happy!), that it all came together. I was sitting with a group of local teens who were part of Project T.R.U.S.T., a Planned Parenthood–sponsored teen sex education program. They told me about learning everything there was to know about birth control, consent, sexually transmitted infections and how to prevent them, and more. They had testified before school board meetings and had publicly spoken out in favor of comprehensive sex education. In small, conservative-leaning Kalamazoo, that wasn’t easy. I was captivated.
Lindsay Swisher, a high school senior about to graduate, told me, “When I started as a teen peer educator four years ago, I was really shy.” But after being part of Planned Parenthood, she said, “I can talk to anyone about anything. It has changed my life.” Another high school student, Ricky Bicknell, had a sparkle in his eye; I knew our paths would cross again. (Who could have predicted where we’d all end up ten years later? Lindsay graduated from college and has just finished serving in the Peace Corps in Senegal. Ricky became an LGBTQ campus leader at the University of Michigan. He later worked for Planned Parenthood, organizing young people just as others had done for him. And in 2016 I wrote him a recommendation for graduate school, where he’s now getting his master’s degree in public health.)
These teens weren’t simply sex educators; they were leaders, and they belonged at the center of everything we did. Every investment we could make in them would help build our organization, and more than that, our movement. We decided to invite a group of teens from across the country to present at our national meeting, where hundreds of the most important Planned Parenthood leaders came together.
That first time, I wasn’t really sure how it was going to go. The great thing about bringing teens into the meeting was that they were going to shake things up—for better or worse! What happened that first year, and ever since, turned out to be magical. Leaders who had been asking me, “Why don’t young people get involved and appreciate all we’ve done?” were now seeing them in action. These established figures were learning from the next generation of Planned Parenthood activists, who were without a doubt the most diverse group in our organization. Today I hardly ever hear those questions from longtime Planned Parenthood leaders. Where are the young people? They’re everywhere!
But despite the world-class health care, the great organizing, and the young leaders at Planned Parenthood, there was no escaping the fact that our biggest threat was political.
Early on, we did focus groups on Capitol Hill with congressional chiefs of staff and other people who were influential in policy and politics. Almost everyone said the same thing: “We only hear from Planned Parenthood when they need us to take a tough vote. But we can’t depend on them to support us back at home.” Members of Congress who voted with us were flooded by calls from our opposition. It wasn’t good.
To make matters worse, increasingly the Democratic Party was openly recruiting candidates who were against abortion rights. I felt it was critical to show that standing with us was both the right thing to do and the politically smart thing to do. We had to back up our principles with action. We needed to build our grassroots so that members of Congress heard from people back in their home district.
At that point the Planned Parenthood Action Fund had only ever endorsed one presidential candidate: John Kerry in 2004. The 2008 presidential election was wide open. George W. Bush had finished two terms, and we had survived. But now we had to get to work, and fast. I brought on Texas Freedom Network alum Samantha Smoot, who was tough, with a stubborn streak, and knew how to get things done. In 2007, for the first time in its history, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund held a presidential forum. There were no Republicans who were pro-choice or even pro–family planning, so we invited Senators Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards. Obama and Clinton actually came, and Elizabeth Edwards participated in lieu of her husband.
On the day of the forum, hundreds of Planned Parenthood leaders packed into a ballroom in Washington, making history. We believed that we had a real chance to elect one of these leaders to be president, which would finally give us an opening to stop simply fighting back and actually expand rights and access to care. The best part of these forums was the fact that teen leaders from Anacostia and grassroots organizers from the states took the lead. It was incredible—our very own people questioning a potential future leader of the free world!
We didn’t endorse in the primary—all the Democrats were good on our issues—but we were there in force in Denver when Obama accepted his party’s nomination, rocking the house. The Planned Parenthood Action Fund event—named, what else, “Sex and Politics”—was standing room only, with folks lined up down the block to get in. That celebration helped put us on the national scene, with leaders like Governor Kathleen Sebelius and the wonderfully irreverent actor Alan Cumming making an appearance. Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee, wanted to outlaw abortion, so the general election would be a real contest of ideals. Our folks were pumped, and we signed up hundreds of volunteers before we left. The favorite giveaway of the night was a pink condom pack with the tag line “Protect Yourself from John McCain.”
The next morning, on the plane flying home, everyone’s cell phones lit up at the same time with the news that McCain had chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate. I turned to Kirk and asked, “Who is Sarah Palin?”
It was only over the next few days that her profile became clear. She was against everything Planned Parenthood was for: legal abortion, birth control, sex education for teens. When the news came out a few weeks later that her teenage daughter was pregnant, Palin became a poster child for the Far Right. What could have become a bipartisan, teachable moment instead became a rallying cry for the fringe of the Republican Party. Planned Parenthood, on the other hand, was flooded with donations in Palin’s honor. We had to send stacks of thank-you cards to her office.
Barack Obama’s campaign was an unprecedented chance to engage our millions of supporters, and we made the most of it, training organizers and recruiting as many new volunteers as we could. From college campuses to rock concerts, anywhere two or more were gathered together, we signed them up. We dug into data and assigned every woman voter in the country a score on her likelihood to support abortion rights and to support Planned Parenthood. With this kind of information, our organizers and volunteers could target voters and districts no matter where they lived. It was an exciting time, but I was anxious. This was our first big test, and we had a lot to prove—to the country and to Planned Parenthood. On election night, when Obama won, I cried and celebrated with the rest of America—and I breathed an extra sigh of relief that our big bet had paid off.
Four years later Planned Parenthood had grown, as had our ability to impact policy and politics. This time President Obama was facing a tough opponent in Governor Mitt Romney from Massachusetts. Romney was known as a moderate—a successful Republican governor from a progressive state. It was hard to paint him with the extreme-right brush, unlike so many of his primary opponents. He and his wife had even come to Planned Parenthood events in support of women’s issues.
But in March 2012 he made a crucial error. Boasting on television, as only an elite guy would do, he tossed off a fateful line: “Planned Parenthood? We’re going to get rid of that.” That piece of video footage became a television ad that we ran across the country. And as the race tightened, with women becoming perhaps the most critical swing voters, the president and the governor were at Hofstra University for their second, pivotal debate.
I was backstage, watching with a handful of others who had been asked to be available for the press afterward. I heard Obama say, “There are millions of women all across the country who rely on Planned Parenthood.” I could hardly believe it. He proceeded to mention Planned Parenthood, and the work we do, three more times—not that I was counting!
In a short time we had gone from being a political pariah to one of the most important and effective groups to be associated with. It was the first time Planned Parenthood had been mentioned in a presidential debate, and Obama went on to win the election with the largest support from women of any presidential candidate to date. Best of all, we had cracked the code, making sure that when politicians and the public thought about us, they knew who we were and what we did.
This came home to me a couple of days after that debate, when a woman came into our health center on the Gulf Coast Freeway in Houston. She didn’t have a doctor, but she had found a lump in her breast and needed to see someone. The clinician welcomed her and said, “We’re so glad you’re here. May I ask who referred you?” The woman answered, “Well, I heard President Obama say on TV that you do breast exams. And that’s why I’m here.”
Twelve years later I’m grateful every day that I went to that interview. Watching Planned Parenthood grow and adapt, and getting to be part of an organization that does such incredible work, has been the privilege of a lifetime. Today the number of Planned Parenthood supporters has tripled, reaching more than 11 million. Nearly half are young people. Planned Parenthood has been on the leading edge of getting birth control coverage for women in insurance plans. Millions of appointments have been scheduled on mobile phones. The organization has invested in thousands of young people who are changing the world, for reproductive justice as well as a number of other important causes. And those young people have shepherded us into the twenty-first century. Most of all, I’ve been so fortunate to meet doctors, medical staff, clinic escorts, and local leaders who, despite all the political attacks, continue to open the doors of Planned Parenthood health centers every single day, no matter what.
In my time at Planned Parenthood I’ve visited health centers from Brownsville, Texas, to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and in every one the waiting rooms were full of women and young people who needed health care. I experienced so many unforgettable moments, like sitting across the desk from a health center manager in Mobile, Alabama, who had been a teen mom herself and was now counseling women on their options. With all the taboo subjects in the South, she explained, “Planned Parenthood is straight-up health care, the way it should be. This is a judgment-free zone.” I’ve talked to clinicians in Hawaii about the challenges of delivering health care to people away from the mainland, and in Alaska, where we once delivered birth control by float plane to a remote village in the Arctic Circle. In December 2015 I finally checked off my fiftieth state with a visit to Fargo, North Dakota.
Along the way I’ve picked up a few tips. Warren Buffett told me he always travels with his own pillow. Good advice. A navy blue suit never shows dirt, even if you get mistaken for a flight attendant every now and then. When someone tells you they’re praying for you, just say a polite “Thank you” and move on. After all, it can’t hurt, right? Calling home every night, no matter where you are or how late it is, helps. Even when Kirk is already asleep and I just get his voice mail I feel better. Try to know where the best ice cream is in any given airport terminal. A portable clothes steamer can be a lifesaver, since you can use it anywhere and don’t need an ironing board. (Believe me, it works—even in a public bathroom an hour before an event.) Sleep whenever you can, even if it’s for fifteen minutes on a flight. And never shy away from telling people what you do. You dispel myths, for others and yourself.
Not long ago I got on a plane and took my seat next to a guy who looked like a stereotypical businessman. He asked what I did, so I told him that I worked for Planned Parenthood, then waited for the nervous silence. Instead his eyes lit up.
“Wow,” he said, “I just read the Esquire story about that doctor in Mississippi who provides women abortions because he believes it’s the Christian thing to do.”
“Yes, that’s Dr. Willie Parker,” I replied, a little shocked to hear he’d read the article. “He’s a good friend and a great man.”
“Well, I have to say, I had never really thought about how hard it is for women down there. I’m a religious man myself, and it really opened my eyes. So good luck to you.” He went on to tell me about his kids and his life. Who knew?
People ask me whether I am concerned for my safety when I’m on the road. The truth is, most of the people who stop me want to thank me or tell me why they love Planned Parenthood. There was the woman who chased me down on the airport tarmac in Texas to tell me she’d just been at the fundraiser where I spoke and was inspired to call her parents and tell them she’d had an abortion years ago. And the soundboard operator at a big women’s conference in Los Angeles—one of a small handful of men present—who stopped me backstage to tell me his wife and daughters go to Planned Parenthood, and he just had to get a picture.
These days when someone asks me for career advice, some of the first words out of my mouth are the lessons I learned at Planned Parenthood: At every job, look for someone who can teach you something. Stay close to the ground, and remember that you’re never too big of a deal to knock on doors. Find something outside your job that brings you joy—don’t look up years later and realize you missed out on the things you love. Give your staff vacation days, play sports, travel. Doing this will make you a better person and a better organizer. Know that there’s no road map for social change—so keep making it up, don’t get stuck or tied down, and never turn down a new opportunity. And never ever hold yourself back from accepting a big job or a big chance. You can and will figure it out—take it from me.