June 19, 2024 • 56 mins
Alexis McGill Johnson never had taking over Planned Parenthood on her life’s bingo card. But as a woman whose family tree is full of inspirational women, it’s no surprise that Alexis has been able to steer the organization through one of the most tumultuous times for women’s health care access. On this episode of She Pivots, Alexis shares the stories of her grandmother and mother who paved the way for her success, pivoting from teaching at Yale and Wesleyan to organizing, working at the intersection of politics and hip hop, founding and growing the Perception Institute, and becoming the leader of Planned Parenthood. She also details what the reproductive health care landscape looks like now and what’s ahead in the fight for abortion rights.
She Pivots was created by host Emily Tisch Sussman to highlight women, their stories, and how their pivot became their success. To learn more about Alexis, follow us on Instagram @ShePivotsThePodcast or visit shepivotsthepodcast.com.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to She Pivots. I'm Alexis mcgil johnson.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Welcome to she Pivots, the podcast where we talk with
women who dared to pivot out of one career and
into something new and explore how their personal lives impacted
these decisions. I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman. Two years ago,
the Supreme Court eliminated the federal constitutional right to abortion.
(00:38):
I remember when the decision finally came down and the
collective dread. Every woman I knew felt everyone was appalled,
but no one was surprised, least of all Alexis McGill johnson,
who served as President of Planned Parenthood since twenty nineteen.
I'm thrilled to have my friend Alexis on the show
this week. We met way back when I worked at
(01:00):
that Center for American Progress, and at that time she
had no plans to lead Plant Parenthood. Funny story is
that I had actually been the finalist for the job
of personal political director to the President of Planned Parenthood,
and I didn't get the job. Had I gotten it,
we would have ended up working together. So now we're
on this podcast together and Alexis is at the forefront
(01:22):
of the fight to protect and preserve women's reproductive healthcare.
She's a champion for social and racial justice, making key
changes within the organization to address the historical disparities women
of color experience in the women's healthcare space. But Alexis's
career didn't start in women's healthcare or even the women's
space at all. She started her career in academia and
(01:43):
research and made her first pivot when she developed a
voter engagement program that leveraged the power of the hip
hop industry. She mobilized youth voters voters of color, leading
them to the most significant increase in youth voter engagement
in more than a decade. From there, she went on
to co found and co direct the Perception Institute, a
(02:03):
consortium of researchers, advocates, and strategists who use mind research
on race, gender, ethnic and other identities to help reduce
bias and discrimination and improve equity. Despite her impressive resume,
even Alexis didn't think she'd end up as the leader
of Planned Parenthood after dedicating her career to racial equity,
(02:24):
but she rose up to meet the moment, and now,
as President of Planned Parenthood, she's brought an inclusive lens
to her work to ensure the women of color have
full access to sexual and reproductive health. Alexis's journey from
academia to political activist, to researcher to now president of
Planned Parenthood was less than planned, but like I always say,
(02:45):
her experiences and skills built on one another to allow
her to step in when the movement needed her most.
As someone who used to fill every waking hour with
politics and still feels a sense of burnout from it all,
Alexis inspires me to get involved and see a path
forward that feels doable, and I hope you feel that too.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Enjoy So we're gonna we're going to go back. We're
going to go back all the way to the beginning
roll the tape. I mean, if we go all the
way back, we can go all the way back to
your grandmother. Oh yes, feels like her story of marriage
and kind of liberation like really set the stage for you.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Absolutely. My grandmother, Carrie May Covington was an incredible woman.
She was born in North Carolina. She was raised on
a farm, sharecropping farm and fell in love and her
father was like, yeah, no, you need to stay here
and help the family. She was like one of thirteen.
It's like, you need to stay here because this is
(03:49):
a family's job, right to tend to these crops. And
you know, obviously you know the period of time that
she was born into. And she said, no, I really
want to stay with this man. And he moved up
north and sent for her back back then that would
mean sending her money for a train ticket, and she
got on the train and she made her way up
(04:10):
to New Jersey where she met him and eloped. And
my grandmother these two long braids and she cut them
off when she got married, and she mailed them back
to her father with a copy of her birth certificate.
And that is like not just family lore, that is
just like such a family I would say, opening salvo
(04:31):
for the kind of energy and the womanism that really
dominates I think my family line. And so, you know,
while she had more flexibility and more freedom, you know,
she was a domestic She was you know, the maid
in hotels and taking care of people's houses, and so
she didn't, you know, move into this world of freedom.
Right she got married. She had two three daughters, one
(04:56):
of them passed away very early. My mother and my aunt,
you know, and essentially ended up raising them. Her husband
was you know, abusive as well. And you know, I think,
you know, if you think about the times that they
were coming up in and the kinds of things that
you know, then my mother and aunt would we were
exposed to as well. I think the things that I
mostly heard about growing up was how how much she
(05:18):
was there for community. So, you know, somebody would always
my mom always tells a story of what it would
mean to like get on foot. You know, so and
so is coming up. They need to get on foot right,
and the first stop would be my grandmother's house, and
that meant they had a place to stay, they had
a meal, they had kind of a line into maybe
some kind of employment, they had probably a little pocket chains,
(05:39):
they had a church to go to, and my grandmother
was really a kind of center of building that community.
But you know, again, you know, it wasn't one that
came out of a lot of resources. So they were
building kind of community programs out of their church. You know.
I remember my mom was a worked at Bell Laboratories
at and T. Bell Laboratories back then, and she once
(06:00):
came to h to Calvary Baptist Church, which was her
church with like a whole bunch of computers and like
built a computer science lab at the you know, at
the church. She's like, no, this is what all the
kids are going to Eventually, there's going to be a
computer in every single person's household, you know. And we're like, what,
that's crazy, She's crazy, Yeah, exactly. So they were always
(06:20):
thinking about how to prepare community. So I think the
it's the same impulse, right, It's the same kind of
lessons I learned, but just translated in different ways.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Those lessons didn't stop at her grandmother. Her mother also
became an inspiration to Alexis after working her way up
from a secretary to an executive at AT and T.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
My mom, you know, is incredibly bright student. She graduates
and she is you know, goes to a guidance counselor,
and guidance counselor is like, yeah, I'm not sure if
college is for you, right as a you know, as
a woman, as a black woman, and kind of slides
her into a secretary pool at Fellabs. And you know,
my my mother actually much the same way, and actually
(07:02):
just making this connection myself did very much the same thing, right,
So people would come to my mom because she was
incredibly fast typis, she's very you know, congenial, and everybody
liked kay. And so she rises through the ranks and
then becomes someone in power right who is able to
put people on right, to help them get on foot
through the company, so they would come go see Miss
(07:22):
K about a job. Right. So my mom became the
person that would then bring people into the you know,
into the bell bell Laboratory's family and then see them
rise up. And so I think so much of her journey,
you know, she started off as as secretary kind of
finished as a vice president of labor negotiations of all things,
and you know, and really I think through that time
(07:43):
enjoyed so much the kind of seeing people through the
journeys all the way through.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
What did you think you were going to be when
you grow up? Like, how did you envision your life
as an adult? When I was young, I wanted to
be an astronaut. I was very you know into science.
I think this is also part of my mom's kind
of influences and working with you know, some of the
most amate she exposed us to so many amazing thinkers
and scientists, and she was actually part of the group
(08:09):
that started the first ERG at a company employee resource group,
a group of black employees who got together to advocate
for things inside of the company. And so it was
like through those meetings that I would meet you know,
I met the man who was a physicist who created
coaxial cable, like literally our ability to lay wires underwater, right,
(08:31):
Oh my god, kind of amazing.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
So I was just exposed to a lot of like
kind of rich scientists and thinkers very early on, and
just always wanted to be in science and math.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
But you did go to a great college. You went
to Princeton still in New Jersey. Was the idea to
kind of stay local or you just fell in love
with the school.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
It's the only school I applied to. Wow, I know
it was. I did fall in love with it. You know,
we had you know, our state tournaments and things like that.
So it was very familiar with the school as its reputation.
And I just remember going on the tour and loving
it and you know, meeting such interesting people. And I
applied early. I was. I started off actually as a
(09:11):
math major because I was very committed until I got
into Bullian algebra and said, okay, this is probably not
going to be my life and decided to become a
political scientist.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
You were still in New Jersey, but Princeton attracts people
from not only all over the country, all over the world.
Did it feel like a bit of a culture shock.
I wouldn't say a culture shock. I felt I felt
very comfortable there. I definitely spent a lot of time
kind of bridging a lot of worlds when I was
when I was at Princeton, so you know.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
It really is. It was also the school that was
used to be the school that was most acceptable for
the Southern Conservatives to send their students, so it had
a more It had a very interesting bent, I would say,
in terms of what I would have expected. So I
was actually exposed to I think, you know, gowing up
in New Jersey, a very liberal community in town, exposed
(10:04):
to a lot of different thinking and ideology. When I
was there, I was part of the first cohort of
women to be able to join through litigation, one of
the eating clubs that was all men, So I was
the first black woman in the Ivy Club. And at
the same time I lived in a kind of residential
house called the Third World Center that was one that
was advocated by you know, students in the seventies who
(10:25):
were looking for kind of a sense of belonging on campus.
And so I kind of feel like I was bridging
all of these different worlds while I was there, and
like a definitely a Princeton poster child, it was. It
was a great experience for me. And then I go
back to reunions. As you know, Princident is known for
their reunion culture, and I hear stories from like thirty
years ago from the first class of you know women,
(10:48):
you know, first classes of women, and they have such
a radically different experience of what it felt like to
break those barriers at the time, and how many of
them had not come back to the school. Have you
not supported it? Have not supported the students, and not
out of you know, lack of desire wanting to be
a resource to people, but just you know, really had
(11:09):
significant trauma through there. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Well, I mean I was going to ask you, like
what I think there's a lot of conversation now around
lawsuits for exclusion inclusion, Like I think that's coming back,
I think, particularly with the Supreme Court, So in a
first person perspective, like what did that feel like to
be the first black woman in the eating club as
a result of litigation.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
So I remember when I got into got into school, Right,
I think this is the story of virtually every black
person who's or you know, personal color, who's gone through
kind of an elite system or college over the last
few years, or even gotten a job. Right, Oh, you're
here because of affirmative action. Oh, you're here because because
of that experience, somehow you don't deserve to be here.
(11:50):
And are you implicitly in that are you actually qualified
to be there? And I you know, you hear it,
You obviously heard it in Justice Thomas's opinion, Right, he
clearly has felled onto because that is and not to
discount it is actually a prevalent phenomenon. But how people
interpret that, I think is another matter. And I think
the way I interpreted it was people have been excluded.
(12:12):
Black people have been excluded from these institutions since their inception, right,
I mean, we're still building kind of access to power,
to networks, to resources, and so you know, it inherently felt, I,
you know, deserved the ability to kind of walk on
the shoulders of the folks who had been litigating and
fighting for fairness and to earn what that meant. And
you know, so I don't think I ever carried it
(12:33):
in a particular way other.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Than yes, and so political science. What did political science?
I mean you ended up coming back to it again,
like we've got a full circle moment here. But did
you think you were going to be a political scientist,
political strategist or you just were really drawn to organizing?
Speaker 1 (12:50):
So I went to political science. Kind of it was
like making a decision between recognizing I wasn't going to
be a math major, right, definitely not going into medicine,
and you know, and really ticking off things that had
been traditional pathways. Right, you're going to school, you were
going to go out and work, you know, Wall Street
(13:11):
you're going to leave, or a consulting firm. You're going
to go to law school, you're going to go to
medical school.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
Right.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
I didn't really have any other things on my BINGO card.
That's the only paths that I was exposed to that
I knew people in that could tell me something. And
I was in with my one of my mom's friends
from from Belabs was at our house one day and
it was some time during the fall of the Soviet
Union and condoleez or Ice had been on TV all
(13:37):
the time right as the expert speaking about you know,
it's like the Sovietologist, and it was the most amazing
thing to see her that represented. And honestly, I think
you'll you will hear throughout this right representation has been
so important for me. The ability to see myself because
I'm seeing others who are standing and doing something different
was just like, you know, wow, And so I'd always
(13:59):
been drawn to seeing her, and my dear family friend
mister Coleman said, you know, she kind of reminds me
of you, and it was like an aha, Right sometime
I was maybe sitting around a diner room table and
I thought, huh. So I came back to back into school.
I started studying political science and the idea of becoing
(14:21):
a Latin Americanist, So studying doing a lot of research
in and around Latin America and the ability to start
to connect the dots around the diaspora of what was
happening around race and Bracil and in Colombia, and to
start to think differently about kind of what I could do.
And you know, one of my professors said, you could
be a professor be a professor professor and I was like,
(14:44):
oh my god, what is that? And so, you know,
I definitely always loved research. I've always loved writing. That's
like one of my one of my passions that I
never get a chance to do. And I think I
really really, if I draw the through line from my
math and science experience, I really love like the problem
solving that could be embedded in the kind of work.
(15:07):
And even now, like my staff will say, you know,
she wants to know what the theory of change is, right,
she wants to know what we're solving for, what is
X right? And like what is the reality that we
need to declare that we need to see in any
particular moment, what are we working towards? And that I
think is important. But that theory of change of how
do you use a set of resources?
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Right?
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Some of its money, some of its talent, some of
it is you know, circumstance and opportunity and like incentives
for people, right, because some of so much of politics,
as you know, is kind of kind of playing people's
motives off of each other, right, incentives off of each other,
And how do you how does that come together in
a way where you can you can test and see
how that shifts behavior? Right? How does that shift shift
(15:50):
the opportunity for policy change? And I think in the
same way that you're seeing and then the move to
tactics on the on the school board level, I think
on the movement level, I think the rush to take
advantage to an opportunity without thinking through what is the
rigor required here? What are we testing for and how
are we building in kind of a process to learn
what the insights and takeaways are before we move to
(16:11):
do the next thing. And I think we lack that methodology.
I think that's why we're a little bit behind, particularly
in the repro space right now. But it's really, I
think a really important foundational quality.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
When we come back, Alexis talks about her first and
unexpected first pivot. So, in your teaching time, you had
a Sasha Fierce moment, you had a rebrand. Can you
tell us about that? It may be my first pivot.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Yes. So my first name is Laurie Elo Laurie Alexis
mcgil and I've did Laurie all the way through college
and then I got to graduate school and my second
year of my first year, I was asked to teach
to be a TA for a a big survey course
of black politics. And you know, I was like the
(17:05):
same age as the students, right, you know, I skipped kindergarten.
I was a you know, born late in the summer,
so basically I really was the same age as a
as a student. And I'm sitting there in this room.
I'm incredibly nervous, and you know, it's a little small
presep room. And this young student next to me says,
(17:25):
or not young, same student next to me, same age, says, well,
you know, it takes me a while to get people's names.
I'd really like for us to go around the table
and just like start to like know who people are,
because you know, it's like second semester, first year. So
people start going around the room and they introduce themselves,
where they're from, whatever. And I happened to be the
last person and I said I'm Alexis McGill. And it
(17:48):
was like I said it to like force myself to
commit to it. And I think when I said it,
I felt like I am the professor in the room.
I was really TA, but I said, I am in power.
I am going to grade your exams, and I need
to feel that I actually have the ability to do that.
And so Alexis I became and there was still like
(18:11):
some people from first semester were like a little confused
because they knew me his Lri she looks just like Laurie,
just like Laurie exactly, sounds like her, I mean everything
about her, and I just I just kept going and
then I, you know, I would go home and I
started to train my family and my mom to you know,
and once I got my mom locked in, you know,
I was like, Okay, I think we can do this. Okay.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
So after you went, you continued to teach for a
couple of years at Yale and at Wesleyan. You made
I think probably your first big professional pivot into organizing.
How did that jump happen?
Speaker 1 (18:45):
So this is I think one of the things that
we were talking about about, like staying in theory land.
And it's so easy it is, especially when you're an
academic to like kind of be able to you're immersed
in kind of studying movements and history. And my kind
of well was bair to rest in thinking about in
that moment and what was Ellen Baker thinking? And you know,
how about Harvey Milkon, like you're always trying to get
(19:06):
into the minds that people were putting together the systems
and the structures of organizing. There's something just so compelling
about that. And you're also very much immersed in understanding
the systems, right, because I think that's the other thing
that I think I brought from that kind of early
math experience is just like thinking about systems thinking right,
and what does it mean to understand not just motivating
individuals to do something or understanding group identity, but to
(19:30):
really understand, like how do all of these structures and
systems come together in service freedom. And it was kind
of in that moment of starting to teach that I
was teaching, of course on just broad politics, American politics,
and I started to think about hip hop, right. I
started to think about how kind of my generation came
(19:54):
up under kind of very charismatic identity politics leadership, Charismatic
Black leadership in the form of Jesse Jackson had been
running for president, Reverend Sharpton had been running for president,
We had Julian Bonond, We had all of these really
charismatic leaders and at the same time understand that so
much movement was happening through systems and structures, and hip
hop was this huge force, right that it really kind
(20:15):
of hit its stride by that time. So it's like
the early nineties, and there are actually early two thousands,
but early nineties is kind of when I came into
hip hop, and I had this idea that like, what
if the hip hop generation could become the next NRA.
So if you think about the NRA five million members,
I think consistently, I don't think it's really gone up
or gone down really for the last however long. But
(20:37):
hip hop at the time represented then eighty million households,
eighty million households. It cut across racial demographics, it cut
you know, bridge suburban and urban areas, you know, all
across rural areas, really all across the country. People were
finding their different, different voices inside of hip hop. And
hip hop also had a built in infrastructure, right, it
had a marketing machine in the day, like in the
(21:01):
early you know, whenever we were buying records, records would
drop on a Tuesday, and they would drop and you
would wait in line right to get the to be
like one of the first, right, so I would go
to like Sam Goodies, Virgin Records, a tower, you know,
and there would be lines around the block to get
like the first to the first cut. And I just
(21:22):
remember thinking like, this is amazing. If you have all
of these mechanisms that are designed to turn people out
on a Tuesday, and they do that because billboard ratings
drop on Wednesday, so it gives you a full week
to kind of enter the charts at thirty five and
make your way all the way up to the top,
or you know, four hundred and thirty five and make
(21:42):
your way all the way up to the top. And
there's a whole set of systems and mechanisms that help
you do that. I thought, well, gosh, I mean, if
it's every Tuesday, why can't we do it on election Day?
Speaker 2 (21:52):
I mean, what happens else on Tuesday? Hello?
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Yes, yes, exactly. And so I started. So I wrote
an article about, you know, turning the up generation to
the next NRA. And it was a theory, right, It
was just like, here's this idea, and that that theory
kind of led me into I researched myself into a job.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
So what were those steps to actually get into this job?
And yes, did you find it overwhelming to say, well,
this has just been a theory in a classroom, a metric.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Yeah exactly. Oh my god. So I was I was
out out here actually with some friends over the summer,
and I was sitting at a table with the late
Andre Herrel, who is a music industry icon, founder of
Town Records. He was president of Motown Records. And you know,
(22:44):
we had some friends at the table who were struggling
with like wanting to be engaged and also not really
fully understanding all of the political implications of like how
to engage you know, people who leverage brands, people who
know how to move kind of records and choose, but
not really understand kind of how to move and know
that they knew people, but how to move inside of
(23:04):
politics and political parties. And so I was kind of
sitting in this conversation with Andre and some other friends,
and they were trying to come up with some people,
like come up with the list of names who you know,
who could be like who could help us do this? Right?
They say, what do you think of this guy? I'm like, Oh,
he's cool, he's really good. You know, here's the strengths,
here's the weakness. What about this guy? Oh yeah, he's
very nice. I like him. I'm not sure if he
(23:25):
understands what he must have gone like through four or
five names. They were all men, and I said, do
you know any women? And he was like, huh, I
don't know. And I'm like literally sitting in his face,
like do you know any women? And I was like,
I said, you want to tell me that you don't
(23:46):
know any flass badass you know political science degree, holden,
you know, professors been teaching it.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
I'm was like, you don't know any of us? And
he knows. To me, He's like, I see what you
did there. So I became a political director at the
Hip Hop Summit Action Network, and so that was working
for Ben Chevas and Russell Simmons, and so I helped
organize these hip hop summits, which were opportunities for us
(24:17):
to bring I would say town halls to communities where
we'd bring artists in. We'd have Ell Cool J. You know,
you'd have FC Light, you'd have Mary J. Blige and Diddy,
and we would kind of open up a big community
center and all of these major artists, major record executives
would be kind of on a stage and they'd be
(24:38):
talking about the importance of politics and how to get
engaged and why it was so important and critical for
our communities. And then we'd bring local leaders would come
in right to kind of talk about the work that
was happening on the ground. And the only way to
get in was to register to vote. And if you
couldn't register to vote, you had to kind of identify
someone else in your family who could vote. And we
(24:58):
were able to register like thousand registrations a week in
certain cities, insane numbers, thirty thousand a week in Chicago.
We were we were, you know, driving an increase in
engagement all throughout that that time period. So it's just
(25:18):
now two thousand and three going to the two thousand
and four election, critical election. They're all critical elections, but
again one a lot was going on a critical election,
and so it was really powerful because we could go
in with the group of artists. We could take over
radio right all the morning drive time. We would have
our artists not just talking about kind of they're promoting
(25:38):
whatever they're promoting for themselves, but also talking about the
importance of engaging where to go to registered vote, connecting
them to their local ANDAAC partners and you know, all
those things and then you know, and then there'd be
a party at night, and you know, and then we
do other work like organizing the local influencers in communities, right,
some of whom had only ever been together kind of
(25:59):
you know, at the club, we're at the party or whatever,
but bringing them together, the hottest barbers, the hottest DJs,
the hottest kind of club promoters, and kind of bringing
them to break bread around like you are actually influencing
people in your conversation every single day, right, Nike's paying
you to promote this. You know, you're getting this from
you know, this artist, and this is what it looks like.
(26:20):
You know, if you want to talk politics. And many
of them would say, yeah, we'd love to do a
little bit more of that. But you know, we don't
really feel confident at all the information that we have.
We don't really know how to parse what's being said
and what isn't. And so we created models to educate folks, right,
to get them into connected to trusted messengers, right, all
the things that you know you would do in a
(26:42):
campaign anyway, but we built kind of certain communities around
them so that we were able to kind of drive
that work city by city and from the hip Hop Summit,
I went to work for Sean Colbe's Diddy Love I
Think Now and I ran his voter Die campaign. So
whereas kind of Russell's campaign was much more ground campaign.
He traveled city by city with you know, you know,
(27:02):
he would go to a foot locker and sell shoes,
he would go down radio, he would do a town hall,
you know, and he would kind of move all of
those pieces around. Puffer really just only wanted to be
on the air and Sarah. He cut you know, relationships
with MTV, be et radio, one Clear Channel, you know,
and through those media relationships we were able to kind
(27:22):
of kind of create an arc around the conversation that
we wanted to have at the national level. And so
it was it was really I think the beauty of
that that gear, that work of testing kind of what
does it look like to have kind of a national
conversation happening, How do you really draw make it drawed
down on the ground so that it is penetrating into
community through all of these local influencers into election day.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
So just a foreshadow a bit here during that era
for you, how much did you talk about abortion, talk
about reproductive health or was it just not on the
agenda of things, the issues you talked about.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Never. Never, I don't think we ever had a conversation
about abortion back then.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Alexis had no idea her work in political organizing would
lead her to the helm of planned parenthood. After five
more years working at the intersection of political organizing and
hip hop, Alexis branched out on our own, co founding
the Perception Institute, an anti bias research group.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
It started this institute called the Perception Institute. It was
really bring a group of social psychologists and neuroscientists together
to understand kind of how really how our brains and
bodies responded to race, and kind of doing a lot
of that work. But it was largely blackmail centric, right.
It was, you know, responding to a lot of the
police involved shootings and things like that.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
To no and surprise, Alexis built the Perception Institute into
a huge success.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
And I was doing incredible exciting work. I was working
with police departments and healthcare companies and school districts. I
had designed curriculum for Starbucks and Goldman and Prada. You know,
I was like, I was like living my best life
in all of those ways. And so I was super
excited about the work that I was doing.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
When we come back, Alexis tells us how a billboard
and a dinner got her involved in Planned Parenthood and
changed the trajectory of her life. Tell us about the
first time you met Cecil Richards, the previous head of
Planned Parenthood.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
My goodness, I can't remember exactly when I met her.
I knew of her for a very long time, and
then I was invited to a dinner with my husband
and we were at dinner together and I had been
walking in the city, I think maybe not too long before.
She'd only been a plant Parenthood for a few years,
and I remembered seeing this billboard in Soho with this
(29:53):
little black girl's face on it, and I it was
like she was cute, and I like tried to get
close to it to see what it said, and I like,
was it a Benetton ad or a gap ad or something?
And I got there and the words underneath it said
the most dangerous place for an African American or in
the womb, And it was like it just it was painful,
(30:13):
and I couldn't stop thinking about that billboard, like the
fact that our reproductive choices are demonized no matter what
we do, right, And it was just kind of lurking
in the back of my mind. And then I was
at this dinner party with her, at a small dinner
and I was like, you have to do something about
this thing, Like have you seen what's going on in Soho?
(30:35):
In Soo? They're coming for us in Soho and she
was like yeah, She's like no, it's not just so Ho.
Sounded crazy. I was like, you have to do something,
and you know, she was like, no, I think you
should do something. She was like, you know, you could,
happy to have you involved or whatever. And you know,
a couple of weeks later, maybe it's a month later,
(30:55):
I get a call from someone that i'd also known
kind of who's on the board in the space, really
new friend actually, and she's like, oh, I just wanted
to invite you to lunch with Seal Richards. I was like, okay, yeah,
it's like I just met her, Like this is weird.
And then I started to get involved in the process
of being recruited to the board, you know, and I
think it was a lot around the kind of energy
(31:16):
and passion I was bringing, and then also the work
that I knew the organization needed to do to kind
of get deeper and touch to, you know, communities like me,
like I had no idea all of the amazing work
that Planned parent had been doing communities I've obviously knew
of Planned Parenthood had been to Bland Parenthood. And so
she recruited me to the board and I eventually became
her board chair. Over the years and that just started.
(31:38):
It was an incredible opportunity to ride sides at all
with her how many years, like how long?
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Because she did you hadn't really when you had been
working on different issues, you hadn't worked on abortion before.
So was this really your first foray into repro It was,
And I think that was one of my calculations, right,
it was.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
It was one of the things that made me say,
I had looked at all of the work I had
been doing, so I'd worked on you know, political organizing.
There's nothing that I'm waking up every single day about
thinking about gender. And that's when you know, it just
all coincidence, like a kind of perfect storm. I was
thinking about that I met Cecil, I was invited to lunch,
and then I joined the board, and then that became
(32:12):
kind of my like, Okay, this is the intersection.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
Of all the work. Alexis joined the board in twenty
eleven and served as board chair from twenty thirteen to
twenty fifteen. Then in twenty eighteen, in the middle of
the Trump presidency and a fired up political climate, Cecil
Richards decided to step down. Okay, so how did you
see your role at that time? When Cecil stepped down.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
I was on the board, and I was on the
action fun boards and not the board that actually employs her,
right And I was on the I was I remember
I was at a conference with my husband and the
phone start ringing because the decision, like the kind of
the first leak came down that she was stepping down.
And yeah, I just saw my role as supporting the
(33:00):
organization to identify the next new amazing leader.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
It was clear that Alexis wanted no part in leading
the organization through an already complex political environment.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
I've seen it up really close. I don't know if
I weddy parts. I know, I mean I navigated, you know,
a lot with under her leadership and supporting her. You know,
we'd gone through kind of a decade of trap laws
and litigation and the smear campaigns and the targeting and
the shootings of clinics, and you know, I just like
(33:33):
it was, you know, it's been an intense ten years already,
and I said, you know, I just I don't I
don't think that I'm on one. The other thing I
said was that here's the thing we're always going to
fall and I don't know that as a black woman,
I want to preside over the end of rope. And
it was a kind of very conscious conversation that I
(33:53):
had with various members of the committee, you know, friends,
you know, not like in any formal process, but I
just said, like, that's the thing that weighs on me, right,
that you know, we have kind of tried to stave
off this loss for so long and then to step
into leadership at a moment when it's eminent, and that
(34:14):
felt really heavy, and I didn't want it to be
associated in some way like Barack Obama becomes president, right,
the economy is just in a free for all fall, Right,
It's like here you go.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Yeah, fixes Planned Parenthood eventually hired cecial successor, and instead
of ushering in a new era, things turned to chaos
as the organization became divided over whether their mission was
one of public health or of policy and politics, and
his anti abortion groups became stronger, and Trump pushed through
(34:47):
both of his Supreme Court nominees. It was clear that
Planned Parenthood needed a new leader.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
The organization was in a moment, a leadership vacuum, right,
leadership crisis, where we had to make a decision to
stuff great from a leader. And the board chair came
to me and said, and I guess I actually remember
where I was, what I was doing, and what I
was wearing. I had I had just signed Prada as
a client, and I was going in to meet the
(35:14):
you know, the team for the first time. So I
had to, of course, like find the perfect outfit that
would feel appropriate to walk in, you know, to not
be too over the top, too on the news, but
you know, to fit with it. And I was standing
on the corner in a very nondescript, you know, area
of the city, about to go into like you know,
kind of their you know, their headquarters, and the phone
(35:36):
rang and it was the It was the current board
chair and I she said, Oh, I just want to
catch you up on kind of where we are with
the leadership. And I said, okay, and I said, I
think I'm all caught up, because you know, I was
on executive committees and other places, so I think I'm
all caught up. And she said, no, no, I am. There's
(35:56):
another conversation I want to have with you. And she said,
if we have to move in this direction, would you
step in? And I stood there stunned on the corner
because I had that was not on my being con card.
And at the same time, I knew as a former
board chair, which she was asking of me, she needed
(36:19):
to have a conversation and she needed to know that
I would be there if she needed me. So it
wasn't quite a quite a step in. It was like
the beginning of it. And so I said, I need
to call my business partner my husband in that order,
because we were just in the middle of, you know,
(36:39):
this amazing work that we had started and it was
just gaining traction and building proof of concept. And she
was like, yeah, you got to do this. She's like,
of course, it's like they need of course. We were
going into the most critical year of our lives, like
you have got to do this. I said, okay. Then
I called Rob and he was like, yes, of course,
like you have to do this, like you know your daughters,
(36:59):
you know, like they need to you know, you are
fighting for them and you know. And it was like
and I their responses were quicker than mine, which was
a little bit you know, kind of unsettling because I
was like, oh wow, like now there's this is really
all me, Right, I have to answer this question because
there's no one else I can say. Said, oh, you know,
(37:21):
I just couldn't leave my partner. I just couldn't, you know,
kidden leave Rob to tend to everything. And I called
her back and said, I'll be here for what you need.
Congratulations on the new job. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Me to Alexis McGill Johnson, the New Jersey native is
the new national Acting President and CEO of Planned Parenthood.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
And so I came in during a leadership transition. I
came in July twenty nineteen, and I came in as
acting president and my job really was to stabilize the
team and the staff, right, I mean, CECIL built a
world class, you know, political organizing machine on top of
our kind of the incredible healthcare that our affiliates were
(38:03):
providing and also being strained under because of kind of
the Trump years that we were living in. And so
I started to stabilize. I turned the corner. I said,
my only condition was I want to stay long enough
to get us through twenty twenty. Right. I wanted to, like,
if I was going to build a team, I wanted
to run that election and make sure that, like I
(38:26):
got it back to running on all cylinders, so that
the next person wouldn't have to, you know, come in
and do that from scratch. And twenty twenty was twenty twenty.
And so I found myself in a situation where I
was rebuilding a team. I was now leading an organization
going through a pandemic as a healthcare provider. Right, so
(38:50):
our affiliates who run our health centers were navigating challenges
around getting access to PPE and you know, concerns about
their providers and executive orders prevent them from providing abortion
even way obviously, four years before Bobs, every woman was
grappling through that situation. And then there were the racial reckonings,
(39:10):
and then there was the election, and then there was
the insurrection, and then it was SBA in Texas, and
then it was the oral arguments those jobs and so
like in some ways. I don't you know. Somewhere along
the way I think it was when in the first
year in twenty twenty is when I became the permanent president.
(39:33):
But somewhere along the way, I don't know that I
ever stopped to stop. From that one conversation I had
on the sidewalk outside, I'm proud of it, said if
you need me, I will step in to say, I'm
putting my hat in the ring. It was there is
work we need to continue to do in order to
get us out of this moment.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
By fury right outside the Supreme Court, hy those American women,
oh the constitutional protection to get an abortion?
Speaker 5 (40:03):
The Supreme Court has reached a decision on the landmark
Roe v.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Wade case. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
Wade, holding that there is no longer a federal constitutional
right to an abortion.
Speaker 5 (40:16):
You know me, I had an abortion when I was
fifteen years old. And I'm telling you this because I'm
genuinely really scared for women and girls all over this country.
Speaker 4 (40:29):
Canada, and we really need you all. This is not right.
It's not the country we know. It's not the country
I went to sleep in last night. I'm really afraid
for women's rights. And I'm really sad in my country.
I love my country so much, and I'm just so embarrassed.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
It's been just two years since Roe was overturned, and
sometimes it doesn't feel real. It's been so much so
quickly that we've barely had time to pause and process.
But through all of the chaos and the lows, Alexis
has thought fully carved out a strategic path for the organization,
one that might not have had the room to grow
had that faithful day on June twenty fourth, twenty twenty
(41:09):
two never happened.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
And I think what the you know, with the period
post oops has taught us is that it's actually helped
us put abortion back into the reproductive healthcare landscape right
because there are people with, you know, pregnancies that were
intended that no longer can get miscarriage care right or
who are you know the early stories that we heard
during SBA, when patients were being sent home to wait
(41:33):
for sepsis to set in because the doctors were too
afraid to treat them and the trauma you know that
they're experiencing, being forced to carry pregnancies that are no
longer viable and so I think there is a you know,
what is happening. I think in this period is kind
of an understanding that these criminalizing abortion and actually makes
(41:53):
pregnancy less safe. That providers no longer want to live
in states that have banned the procedure right because they
don't want to be criminalized themselves. So that's going to
have it impact not just on you know, again pregnancy care,
but it's also going to ripple into the workforce. People
don't want to be sart live in states where they
can't decide that that's the place where they want to
start to raise a family.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
So with all that, your mindset must have flipped at
some point that I'm not just stabilizing, I'm building.
Speaker 4 (42:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
So I talked to a lot of people when I
joined as an interim around kind of what are some
best practices as an interpret Like, I knew there were
things that obviously I had been around for a decade.
I knew kind of things that needed to be fixed,
things that we needed to kind of address relationships I
wanted to restore again, getting the organization to be like healthy,
(42:43):
you know, and then to hand it off and wait
in a way and you know, and wanting to feel
good about what that work was. And somewhere in the
first year, first few months, maybe even one of my
colleagues in the Federation said, you know, like you feel
really tentative to me, like you know, your title is
acting president, but you are the president. And I had
(43:07):
like this thought of, like, you know, when you go
and you stay in somebody's house and it's like really
lovely and so well appointed, and you want when you're leaving,
you want everything to be exactly as you found it, right,
Like the pillow is fluffed up, exactly as you found it,
Like you're fixing up the bathroom and making sure like
you know, even though you know someone's going to come
behind you and do that, and like you are doing
all of it because you want to make it as
(43:27):
perfect as possible. And I felt like I was fluffing
up the pillows inside of the organization and really not
allowing myself the opportunity to do the fixing. And so
I reflected on it in that moment and later she
said to me, here's my advice, drive it like you
stole it. And I was like it was something really
freeing about saying, yeah, you know what, I am the president.
(43:52):
It was my Sasha fears. You know, Alexis came back right,
and I'm like, yeah, I am the president, and I
I am going to lead this organization through this crisis.
I'm going to lead this organization through this crazy election.
And I think that maybe energy is what drove me
into kind of a new conversation and allowed me to be.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
Become own it. So what did that look like for
you once you were owning it? Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
It really was about setting the course for for where
we are now, right, it was it was writing the
op ed Margaret Sanger in the New York Times.
Speaker 2 (44:29):
The op ed Alexis is referring to is her fiery
article she penned in twenty twenty one titled I'm the
Head of Planned Parenthood. We're done making excuses for our founder.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
Really owning our kind of racial history and kind of
reckoning not so much with her right, since I put
in the piece like I don't know what was in
her heart right, but reckoning with as a movement that
has been predominantly white, lead the work that we needed
to do to interrogate our own systems and structures in
(45:01):
order to make ourselves a place of belonging for people
who look like me, and what that work would mean.
It meant, you know, doing a kind of similar inquiry
around what we knew would happen when Row fell, right,
questions that I started to ask the board very early on,
(45:22):
literally a year almost to the date that of the
DABS decision. I was in a board meeting and I
asked them, who are we going to be when we
are no longer defending Row? Do we have an answer
to that question? Because this is an organization that's really
built to defend, and we need to build a different
muscle around imagination, right, We need to understand the new
(45:43):
reality that people are going to be in, not just
for the short term, right, because like flying people around
the country, people driving five hundred miles just to get
access to medication, that is not a long term strategy.
So what is our new vision? So like starting to
see those questions, and I think in many ways there
is like I operate a little bit like professor in chief.
(46:05):
You can probably see that, but like asking, you know,
I do believe in the power of the question, right,
and like asking the really hard, high level questions so
that we're not just engaging in the tactics to move
us forward, but really starting to think about what do
we need to dismantle and rebuild in a moment.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
And I think a lot of people want to know
what is the answer to that, Like who are we
if we're not defending row? How do we think about
our relationship to abortion, access to all of reproductive care
moving forward?
Speaker 1 (46:34):
Look, I mean I think we have a plan, right,
It's a and I think it's one that we haven't
really talked through as much, that kind of a movement perspective, right,
But you know, I've been toughly of late talking about
we need to understand the road from twenty twenty four
to twenty forty. That there's no magic bullet that is
going to automatically be like, okay, we're back into the constitution.
(46:56):
This has been a fifty year strategy, right. The opposition
has had a long view, Right, So they've played a
long game, and they have spent decades taking over through
jerrymandering and you know, weaponizing rules in courts, taking over
state houses, taking over the judiciary. And that is why
we are here. So they have created that kind of
(47:16):
political advantage. So our job is to really understand where
our leavers and levers are it starts with twenty twenty four, right,
you know, again, this year is going to be an
incredibly important year where we have to ensure that the
Biden Harris administration stays in power, that we win back
(47:38):
the House, you know, with its small margins, and you know,
and that we we are able to hold and expand
the Senate with the belief that this is a Senate
the Senate that we get is one that will engage
in filibusta reform. That is, that is the immediate path.
That's what allows us to have federal legislation codified. Now
(47:59):
that is obviously, you know, kind of what we are
focusing on this year, and we believe it's inherently doable
and given the circumstances we are, we still hold it
as a you know, it's also aspirational right in this book,
but it's a lot of pieces that have to come
into play for us to get that, and that's what
we are working feverishly towards. We also know we're going
(48:19):
to have to continueified state by state, ballid initiative by
ballid initiative. And I know that what we have seen,
you know, over the year has been that when reproductive
freedom's on the ballot, when abortions on the ballot, we win.
So we know the energy is there across state, across
you know, demographics, across party. And then there are litigating
strategies around identify with the next Supreme Court is going
(48:43):
to need to hear what are the questions the framework
that we need to be laying the ground for to
get back into the constitution. And I think the New
York BALLID initiative, the twenty twenty four New York BAID
initiative is I think one of the best rights based
frameworks that we can looking towards in order to kind
of establish quality. Sorry, just to go back to me,
(49:05):
you said, like, you know, who are we going to be?
I think the flaw in my question really is as
if Roe was enough right. Row had long been undermined
by these laws that allowed for the right but not
for access, and so we have actually this new opportunity
to build back in a different way than saying to
(49:26):
the Biden administration we should just build Row back better.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
Something I think about a lot as a reformed politico
is the difference between policy change and culture change, and
that culture change is something political leaders like Alexis often
have a hard time taking into account, but after years
writing the playbook of how politics can permeate culture, Alexis
has some ideas.
Speaker 1 (49:49):
When I think that the cultural strategies, the way in
which we need to change behavior through culture, or shift
the way we think about equality through culture, the way
we respond to moments like the summer of twenty twenty three,
when you know, you had Beyonce and Barbie and Taylor
pumping billions of dollars into the economy, and you've got
young people now who are like, with someone of my
(50:12):
staff not too long ago was like, yeah, you know menopause,
I'm not doing that. I was like, she's going to
create something totally brand new and she probably won't ever
go through. You know, most of us were raised to
be like a rite of ass it, like no, I'm
not doing that. So like, that's the energy that I
(50:32):
think is part of what we are seeing in this
post Rome moment, right, this like this recognition that rights
actually can be taken away, the freedoms can be taken away,
and I think the f're and the fire of people
who are like, yeah, we're not doing that. So I
(50:52):
actually think that you know, one of the one of
the things that that we will see culturally, right is
people will learn more about how to access care, they
will support each other in doing that, and that is
going to be, you know, I think something that challenges
the ability for them to enforce the policies, and so
(51:16):
I think we can fight and this is what we
are trained to do right at Plan, parent Plan Parent
at Action Fund. You know, our job is to you know,
vigorously build the laws that defend the patients and the
providers and allow them to get access and to make
sure that you know, anybody wants an abortion can get
an abortion, that we get the resources to them, whether
(51:38):
they need to get out of state, that we protect.
You know, we fight for the things like shield laws
to protect the providers who are sending you know, who
are able to send pills through telehealth. We are fighting,
you know, the policies around telehealth and all of those
sorts of things to ensure access. We're obviously fighting for
the right to distribute mifipristone. All of those things I think,
(51:58):
you know, are part of a stress that allows people
to think about the risks that they will take in
terms of accessing care from where they are, and I
think that that is the culture shift, the behavior shift
that we will associate of people being able to get
access to care is also going to be something that
(52:18):
shifts the way we understand how useful policies are. And
I think that people will find ways to get access
to abortion because that is what they've always done, and
our job is to make sure that we are helping
them get access where they can legally and being able
to recognize and understand the field in which they are
(52:39):
engaging in calculated risks. The end of the day, what
I want is for everybody to know what an abortion is,
an actual abortion is. I want people to know where
to get one, who to call right. I want them
to know that Planned Parenthood will be there to support
them and that we will be there to defend them
because we are going to fight on the policy level.
We're going to ensure that we have the elected people
(53:00):
there to support them, and we're going to ensure that
we're working with all of the folks will be there
to support them on there, you know, on their defense
should they be criminalized. I mean, I think that is
the humane thing to do. Well.
Speaker 2 (53:13):
I want to go back to you Alexis personally and
how you got here. Do you think there's a moment that,
now that you look back, was there a moment for
you that at the time you thought it was like, Ugh,
I can't get myself out of this, I can't believe
I'm in this position. And now that you look back
in it, you see it as I've been really having
built the groundwork for the success that you have now.
Speaker 1 (53:34):
I don't know that I can pinpoint the moment in time.
What I can tell you is that the day of
jobs as heavy and as hard and emotional, even though
we knew it was coming, like we even got the leak,
we knew it was coming. Even as hard as that
moment was, there was something inside of me that felt
(53:54):
like I had been preparing for this race all along.
I felt like I understood the power of organizing in
that moment, I understood the power of talking across communities
and work I had done at perception and understanding the
brain science and where people get blocked in their anxiety
about talking about things like abortion, things that are stigmatized.
(54:14):
I kind of could understand the kind of movement equations
that I had been kind of drawing, drawing through the
space the kind of theories that I had been starting
to put in play around why even in the moment
of abortion loss, we still had to invest proactively into
black health equity, in particular in areas where they would
no longer be able to get access in state. And
(54:37):
I felt like, I felt like like like that moment,
like I am here for a reason, right, I have
been called into this space for a reason, and you know,
maybe for such a time as this, and that the
darkness of the day, I think helped me find the strength.
Speaker 2 (54:55):
Thank you so much, Alexis for joining us.
Speaker 1 (54:58):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (55:01):
Alexis continues to serve as President and CEO of Planned
Parenthood Action Fund and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America,
and it's continuing to navigate the complex landscape in a
post row world with grace and fortitude. We're an electioneer
and this issue matters. I hope this conversation reignited the
same spark that is dimmed over the years and inspired
(55:23):
you to get involved to protect women's rights over their
own bodies and health. So talk to your friends and
your community and vote please. You can find links and
resources to Planned Parenthood and the Action fund and more
on our website. You can follow Alexis on Instagram at
Alexis MJPP and be sure to also follow Planned Parenthood
at Planned Parenthood. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to
(55:49):
this episode of she Pivots. If you made it this far,
you're a true pivoter, so thanks for being part of
this community. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and if
you did leave us a rating, please be nice tell
your friends about us. To learn more about our guests,
follow us on Instagram at she Pivots the Podcast, or
sign up for our newsletter where you can get exclusive
(56:09):
behind the scenes content, or on our website she Pivots
the Podcast talk to You Next Week special thanks to
the she Pivots team, Executive producer Emily eda Velosik, Associate
producer and social media connoisseur Hannah Cousins, Research director Christine Dickinson,
Events and logistics coordinator Madeline Snovak, and audio editor and
(56:33):
mixer Nina Pollock.
Speaker 1 (56:35):
I endorse she Pivots.
Welcome back to She Pivots. I'm Alexis mcgil johnson.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Welcome to she Pivots, the podcast where we talk with
women who dared to pivot out of one career and
into something new and explore how their personal lives impacted
these decisions. I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman. Two years ago,
the Supreme Court eliminated the federal constitutional right to abortion.
(00:38):
I remember when the decision finally came down and the
collective dread. Every woman I knew felt everyone was appalled,
but no one was surprised, least of all Alexis McGill johnson,
who served as President of Planned Parenthood since twenty nineteen.
I'm thrilled to have my friend Alexis on the show
this week. We met way back when I worked at
(01:00):
that Center for American Progress, and at that time she
had no plans to lead Plant Parenthood. Funny story is
that I had actually been the finalist for the job
of personal political director to the President of Planned Parenthood,
and I didn't get the job. Had I gotten it,
we would have ended up working together. So now we're
on this podcast together and Alexis is at the forefront
(01:22):
of the fight to protect and preserve women's reproductive healthcare.
She's a champion for social and racial justice, making key
changes within the organization to address the historical disparities women
of color experience in the women's healthcare space. But Alexis's
career didn't start in women's healthcare or even the women's
space at all. She started her career in academia and
(01:43):
research and made her first pivot when she developed a
voter engagement program that leveraged the power of the hip
hop industry. She mobilized youth voters voters of color, leading
them to the most significant increase in youth voter engagement
in more than a decade. From there, she went on
to co found and co direct the Perception Institute, a
(02:03):
consortium of researchers, advocates, and strategists who use mind research
on race, gender, ethnic and other identities to help reduce
bias and discrimination and improve equity. Despite her impressive resume,
even Alexis didn't think she'd end up as the leader
of Planned Parenthood after dedicating her career to racial equity,
(02:24):
but she rose up to meet the moment, and now,
as President of Planned Parenthood, she's brought an inclusive lens
to her work to ensure the women of color have
full access to sexual and reproductive health. Alexis's journey from
academia to political activist, to researcher to now president of
Planned Parenthood was less than planned, but like I always say,
(02:45):
her experiences and skills built on one another to allow
her to step in when the movement needed her most.
As someone who used to fill every waking hour with
politics and still feels a sense of burnout from it all,
Alexis inspires me to get involved and see a path
forward that feels doable, and I hope you feel that too.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Enjoy So we're gonna we're going to go back. We're
going to go back all the way to the beginning
roll the tape. I mean, if we go all the
way back, we can go all the way back to
your grandmother. Oh yes, feels like her story of marriage
and kind of liberation like really set the stage for you.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Absolutely. My grandmother, Carrie May Covington was an incredible woman.
She was born in North Carolina. She was raised on
a farm, sharecropping farm and fell in love and her
father was like, yeah, no, you need to stay here
and help the family. She was like one of thirteen.
It's like, you need to stay here because this is
(03:49):
a family's job, right to tend to these crops. And
you know, obviously you know the period of time that
she was born into. And she said, no, I really
want to stay with this man. And he moved up
north and sent for her back back then that would
mean sending her money for a train ticket, and she
got on the train and she made her way up
(04:10):
to New Jersey where she met him and eloped. And
my grandmother these two long braids and she cut them
off when she got married, and she mailed them back
to her father with a copy of her birth certificate.
And that is like not just family lore, that is
just like such a family I would say, opening salvo
(04:31):
for the kind of energy and the womanism that really
dominates I think my family line. And so, you know,
while she had more flexibility and more freedom, you know,
she was a domestic She was you know, the maid
in hotels and taking care of people's houses, and so
she didn't, you know, move into this world of freedom.
Right she got married. She had two three daughters, one
(04:56):
of them passed away very early. My mother and my aunt,
you know, and essentially ended up raising them. Her husband
was you know, abusive as well. And you know, I think,
you know, if you think about the times that they
were coming up in and the kinds of things that
you know, then my mother and aunt would we were
exposed to as well. I think the things that I
mostly heard about growing up was how how much she
(05:18):
was there for community. So, you know, somebody would always
my mom always tells a story of what it would
mean to like get on foot. You know, so and
so is coming up. They need to get on foot right,
and the first stop would be my grandmother's house, and
that meant they had a place to stay, they had
a meal, they had kind of a line into maybe
some kind of employment, they had probably a little pocket chains,
(05:39):
they had a church to go to, and my grandmother
was really a kind of center of building that community.
But you know, again, you know, it wasn't one that
came out of a lot of resources. So they were
building kind of community programs out of their church. You know.
I remember my mom was a worked at Bell Laboratories
at and T. Bell Laboratories back then, and she once
(06:00):
came to h to Calvary Baptist Church, which was her
church with like a whole bunch of computers and like
built a computer science lab at the you know, at
the church. She's like, no, this is what all the
kids are going to Eventually, there's going to be a
computer in every single person's household, you know. And we're like, what,
that's crazy, She's crazy, Yeah, exactly. So they were always
(06:20):
thinking about how to prepare community. So I think the
it's the same impulse, right, It's the same kind of
lessons I learned, but just translated in different ways.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Those lessons didn't stop at her grandmother. Her mother also
became an inspiration to Alexis after working her way up
from a secretary to an executive at AT and T.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
My mom, you know, is incredibly bright student. She graduates
and she is you know, goes to a guidance counselor,
and guidance counselor is like, yeah, I'm not sure if
college is for you, right as a you know, as
a woman, as a black woman, and kind of slides
her into a secretary pool at Fellabs. And you know,
my my mother actually much the same way, and actually
(07:02):
just making this connection myself did very much the same thing, right,
So people would come to my mom because she was
incredibly fast typis, she's very you know, congenial, and everybody
liked kay. And so she rises through the ranks and
then becomes someone in power right who is able to
put people on right, to help them get on foot
through the company, so they would come go see Miss
(07:22):
K about a job. Right. So my mom became the
person that would then bring people into the you know,
into the bell bell Laboratory's family and then see them
rise up. And so I think so much of her journey,
you know, she started off as as secretary kind of
finished as a vice president of labor negotiations of all things,
and you know, and really I think through that time
(07:43):
enjoyed so much the kind of seeing people through the
journeys all the way through.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
What did you think you were going to be when
you grow up? Like, how did you envision your life
as an adult? When I was young, I wanted to
be an astronaut. I was very you know into science.
I think this is also part of my mom's kind
of influences and working with you know, some of the
most amate she exposed us to so many amazing thinkers
and scientists, and she was actually part of the group
(08:09):
that started the first ERG at a company employee resource group,
a group of black employees who got together to advocate
for things inside of the company. And so it was
like through those meetings that I would meet you know,
I met the man who was a physicist who created
coaxial cable, like literally our ability to lay wires underwater, right,
(08:31):
Oh my god, kind of amazing.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
So I was just exposed to a lot of like
kind of rich scientists and thinkers very early on, and
just always wanted to be in science and math.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
But you did go to a great college. You went
to Princeton still in New Jersey. Was the idea to
kind of stay local or you just fell in love
with the school.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
It's the only school I applied to. Wow, I know
it was. I did fall in love with it. You know,
we had you know, our state tournaments and things like that.
So it was very familiar with the school as its reputation.
And I just remember going on the tour and loving
it and you know, meeting such interesting people. And I
applied early. I was. I started off actually as a
(09:11):
math major because I was very committed until I got
into Bullian algebra and said, okay, this is probably not
going to be my life and decided to become a
political scientist.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
You were still in New Jersey, but Princeton attracts people
from not only all over the country, all over the world.
Did it feel like a bit of a culture shock.
I wouldn't say a culture shock. I felt I felt
very comfortable there. I definitely spent a lot of time
kind of bridging a lot of worlds when I was
when I was at Princeton, so you know.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
It really is. It was also the school that was
used to be the school that was most acceptable for
the Southern Conservatives to send their students, so it had
a more It had a very interesting bent, I would say,
in terms of what I would have expected. So I
was actually exposed to I think, you know, gowing up
in New Jersey, a very liberal community in town, exposed
(10:04):
to a lot of different thinking and ideology. When I
was there, I was part of the first cohort of
women to be able to join through litigation, one of
the eating clubs that was all men, So I was
the first black woman in the Ivy Club. And at
the same time I lived in a kind of residential
house called the Third World Center that was one that
was advocated by you know, students in the seventies who
(10:25):
were looking for kind of a sense of belonging on campus.
And so I kind of feel like I was bridging
all of these different worlds while I was there, and
like a definitely a Princeton poster child, it was. It
was a great experience for me. And then I go
back to reunions. As you know, Princident is known for
their reunion culture, and I hear stories from like thirty
years ago from the first class of you know women,
(10:48):
you know, first classes of women, and they have such
a radically different experience of what it felt like to
break those barriers at the time, and how many of
them had not come back to the school. Have you
not supported it? Have not supported the students, and not
out of you know, lack of desire wanting to be
a resource to people, but just you know, really had
(11:09):
significant trauma through there. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Well, I mean I was going to ask you, like
what I think there's a lot of conversation now around
lawsuits for exclusion inclusion, Like I think that's coming back,
I think, particularly with the Supreme Court, So in a
first person perspective, like what did that feel like to
be the first black woman in the eating club as
a result of litigation.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
So I remember when I got into got into school, Right,
I think this is the story of virtually every black
person who's or you know, personal color, who's gone through
kind of an elite system or college over the last
few years, or even gotten a job. Right, Oh, you're
here because of affirmative action. Oh, you're here because because
of that experience, somehow you don't deserve to be here.
(11:50):
And are you implicitly in that are you actually qualified
to be there? And I you know, you hear it,
You obviously heard it in Justice Thomas's opinion, Right, he
clearly has felled onto because that is and not to
discount it is actually a prevalent phenomenon. But how people
interpret that, I think is another matter. And I think
the way I interpreted it was people have been excluded.
(12:12):
Black people have been excluded from these institutions since their inception, right,
I mean, we're still building kind of access to power,
to networks, to resources, and so you know, it inherently felt, I,
you know, deserved the ability to kind of walk on
the shoulders of the folks who had been litigating and
fighting for fairness and to earn what that meant. And
you know, so I don't think I ever carried it
(12:33):
in a particular way other.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Than yes, and so political science. What did political science?
I mean you ended up coming back to it again,
like we've got a full circle moment here. But did
you think you were going to be a political scientist,
political strategist or you just were really drawn to organizing?
Speaker 1 (12:50):
So I went to political science. Kind of it was
like making a decision between recognizing I wasn't going to
be a math major, right, definitely not going into medicine,
and you know, and really ticking off things that had
been traditional pathways. Right, you're going to school, you were
going to go out and work, you know, Wall Street
(13:11):
you're going to leave, or a consulting firm. You're going
to go to law school, you're going to go to
medical school.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
Right.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
I didn't really have any other things on my BINGO card.
That's the only paths that I was exposed to that
I knew people in that could tell me something. And
I was in with my one of my mom's friends
from from Belabs was at our house one day and
it was some time during the fall of the Soviet
Union and condoleez or Ice had been on TV all
(13:37):
the time right as the expert speaking about you know,
it's like the Sovietologist, and it was the most amazing
thing to see her that represented. And honestly, I think
you'll you will hear throughout this right representation has been
so important for me. The ability to see myself because
I'm seeing others who are standing and doing something different
was just like, you know, wow, And so I'd always
(13:59):
been drawn to seeing her, and my dear family friend
mister Coleman said, you know, she kind of reminds me
of you, and it was like an aha, Right sometime
I was maybe sitting around a diner room table and
I thought, huh. So I came back to back into school.
I started studying political science and the idea of becoing
(14:21):
a Latin Americanist, So studying doing a lot of research
in and around Latin America and the ability to start
to connect the dots around the diaspora of what was
happening around race and Bracil and in Colombia, and to
start to think differently about kind of what I could do.
And you know, one of my professors said, you could
be a professor be a professor professor and I was like,
(14:44):
oh my god, what is that? And so, you know,
I definitely always loved research. I've always loved writing. That's
like one of my one of my passions that I
never get a chance to do. And I think I
really really, if I draw the through line from my
math and science experience, I really love like the problem
solving that could be embedded in the kind of work.
(15:07):
And even now, like my staff will say, you know,
she wants to know what the theory of change is, right,
she wants to know what we're solving for, what is
X right? And like what is the reality that we
need to declare that we need to see in any
particular moment, what are we working towards? And that I
think is important. But that theory of change of how
do you use a set of resources?
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Right?
Speaker 1 (15:27):
Some of its money, some of its talent, some of
it is you know, circumstance and opportunity and like incentives
for people, right, because some of so much of politics,
as you know, is kind of kind of playing people's
motives off of each other, right, incentives off of each other,
And how do you how does that come together in
a way where you can you can test and see
how that shifts behavior? Right? How does that shift shift
(15:50):
the opportunity for policy change? And I think in the
same way that you're seeing and then the move to
tactics on the on the school board level, I think
on the movement level, I think the rush to take
advantage to an opportunity without thinking through what is the
rigor required here? What are we testing for and how
are we building in kind of a process to learn
what the insights and takeaways are before we move to
(16:11):
do the next thing. And I think we lack that methodology.
I think that's why we're a little bit behind, particularly
in the repro space right now. But it's really, I
think a really important foundational quality.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
When we come back, Alexis talks about her first and
unexpected first pivot. So, in your teaching time, you had
a Sasha Fierce moment, you had a rebrand. Can you
tell us about that? It may be my first pivot.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
Yes. So my first name is Laurie Elo Laurie Alexis
mcgil and I've did Laurie all the way through college
and then I got to graduate school and my second
year of my first year, I was asked to teach
to be a TA for a a big survey course
of black politics. And you know, I was like the
(17:05):
same age as the students, right, you know, I skipped kindergarten.
I was a you know, born late in the summer,
so basically I really was the same age as a
as a student. And I'm sitting there in this room.
I'm incredibly nervous, and you know, it's a little small
presep room. And this young student next to me says,
(17:25):
or not young, same student next to me, same age, says, well,
you know, it takes me a while to get people's names.
I'd really like for us to go around the table
and just like start to like know who people are,
because you know, it's like second semester, first year. So
people start going around the room and they introduce themselves,
where they're from, whatever. And I happened to be the
last person and I said I'm Alexis McGill. And it
(17:48):
was like I said it to like force myself to
commit to it. And I think when I said it,
I felt like I am the professor in the room.
I was really TA, but I said, I am in power.
I am going to grade your exams, and I need
to feel that I actually have the ability to do that.
And so Alexis I became and there was still like
(18:11):
some people from first semester were like a little confused
because they knew me his Lri she looks just like Laurie,
just like Laurie exactly, sounds like her, I mean everything
about her, and I just I just kept going and
then I, you know, I would go home and I
started to train my family and my mom to you know,
and once I got my mom locked in, you know,
I was like, Okay, I think we can do this. Okay.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
So after you went, you continued to teach for a
couple of years at Yale and at Wesleyan. You made
I think probably your first big professional pivot into organizing.
How did that jump happen?
Speaker 1 (18:45):
So this is I think one of the things that
we were talking about about, like staying in theory land.
And it's so easy it is, especially when you're an
academic to like kind of be able to you're immersed
in kind of studying movements and history. And my kind
of well was bair to rest in thinking about in
that moment and what was Ellen Baker thinking? And you know,
how about Harvey Milkon, like you're always trying to get
(19:06):
into the minds that people were putting together the systems
and the structures of organizing. There's something just so compelling
about that. And you're also very much immersed in understanding
the systems, right, because I think that's the other thing
that I think I brought from that kind of early
math experience is just like thinking about systems thinking right,
and what does it mean to understand not just motivating
individuals to do something or understanding group identity, but to
(19:30):
really understand, like how do all of these structures and
systems come together in service freedom. And it was kind
of in that moment of starting to teach that I
was teaching, of course on just broad politics, American politics,
and I started to think about hip hop, right. I
started to think about how kind of my generation came
(19:54):
up under kind of very charismatic identity politics leadership, Charismatic
Black leadership in the form of Jesse Jackson had been
running for president, Reverend Sharpton had been running for president,
We had Julian Bonond, We had all of these really
charismatic leaders and at the same time understand that so
much movement was happening through systems and structures, and hip
hop was this huge force, right that it really kind
(20:15):
of hit its stride by that time. So it's like
the early nineties, and there are actually early two thousands,
but early nineties is kind of when I came into
hip hop, and I had this idea that like, what
if the hip hop generation could become the next NRA.
So if you think about the NRA five million members,
I think consistently, I don't think it's really gone up
or gone down really for the last however long. But
(20:37):
hip hop at the time represented then eighty million households,
eighty million households. It cut across racial demographics, it cut
you know, bridge suburban and urban areas, you know, all
across rural areas, really all across the country. People were
finding their different, different voices inside of hip hop. And
hip hop also had a built in infrastructure, right, it
had a marketing machine in the day, like in the
(21:01):
early you know, whenever we were buying records, records would
drop on a Tuesday, and they would drop and you
would wait in line right to get the to be
like one of the first, right, so I would go
to like Sam Goodies, Virgin Records, a tower, you know,
and there would be lines around the block to get
like the first to the first cut. And I just
(21:22):
remember thinking like, this is amazing. If you have all
of these mechanisms that are designed to turn people out
on a Tuesday, and they do that because billboard ratings
drop on Wednesday, so it gives you a full week
to kind of enter the charts at thirty five and
make your way all the way up to the top,
or you know, four hundred and thirty five and make
(21:42):
your way all the way up to the top. And
there's a whole set of systems and mechanisms that help
you do that. I thought, well, gosh, I mean, if
it's every Tuesday, why can't we do it on election Day?
Speaker 2 (21:52):
I mean, what happens else on Tuesday? Hello?
Speaker 1 (21:54):
Yes, yes, exactly. And so I started. So I wrote
an article about, you know, turning the up generation to
the next NRA. And it was a theory, right, It
was just like, here's this idea, and that that theory
kind of led me into I researched myself into a job.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
So what were those steps to actually get into this job?
And yes, did you find it overwhelming to say, well,
this has just been a theory in a classroom, a metric.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Yeah exactly. Oh my god. So I was I was
out out here actually with some friends over the summer,
and I was sitting at a table with the late
Andre Herrel, who is a music industry icon, founder of
Town Records. He was president of Motown Records. And you know,
(22:44):
we had some friends at the table who were struggling
with like wanting to be engaged and also not really
fully understanding all of the political implications of like how
to engage you know, people who leverage brands, people who
know how to move kind of records and choose, but
not really understand kind of how to move and know
that they knew people, but how to move inside of
(23:04):
politics and political parties. And so I was kind of
sitting in this conversation with Andre and some other friends,
and they were trying to come up with some people,
like come up with the list of names who you know,
who could be like who could help us do this? Right?
They say, what do you think of this guy? I'm like, Oh,
he's cool, he's really good. You know, here's the strengths,
here's the weakness. What about this guy? Oh yeah, he's
very nice. I like him. I'm not sure if he
(23:25):
understands what he must have gone like through four or
five names. They were all men, and I said, do
you know any women? And he was like, huh, I
don't know. And I'm like literally sitting in his face,
like do you know any women? And I was like,
I said, you want to tell me that you don't
(23:46):
know any flass badass you know political science degree, holden,
you know, professors been teaching it.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
I'm was like, you don't know any of us? And
he knows. To me, He's like, I see what you
did there. So I became a political director at the
Hip Hop Summit Action Network, and so that was working
for Ben Chevas and Russell Simmons, and so I helped
organize these hip hop summits, which were opportunities for us
(24:17):
to bring I would say town halls to communities where
we'd bring artists in. We'd have Ell Cool J. You know,
you'd have FC Light, you'd have Mary J. Blige and Diddy,
and we would kind of open up a big community
center and all of these major artists, major record executives
would be kind of on a stage and they'd be
(24:38):
talking about the importance of politics and how to get
engaged and why it was so important and critical for
our communities. And then we'd bring local leaders would come
in right to kind of talk about the work that
was happening on the ground. And the only way to
get in was to register to vote. And if you
couldn't register to vote, you had to kind of identify
someone else in your family who could vote. And we
(24:58):
were able to register like thousand registrations a week in
certain cities, insane numbers, thirty thousand a week in Chicago.
We were we were, you know, driving an increase in
engagement all throughout that that time period. So it's just
(25:18):
now two thousand and three going to the two thousand
and four election, critical election. They're all critical elections, but
again one a lot was going on a critical election,
and so it was really powerful because we could go
in with the group of artists. We could take over
radio right all the morning drive time. We would have
our artists not just talking about kind of they're promoting
(25:38):
whatever they're promoting for themselves, but also talking about the
importance of engaging where to go to registered vote, connecting
them to their local ANDAAC partners and you know, all
those things and then you know, and then there'd be
a party at night, and you know, and then we
do other work like organizing the local influencers in communities, right,
some of whom had only ever been together kind of
(25:59):
you know, at the club, we're at the party or whatever,
but bringing them together, the hottest barbers, the hottest DJs,
the hottest kind of club promoters, and kind of bringing
them to break bread around like you are actually influencing
people in your conversation every single day, right, Nike's paying
you to promote this. You know, you're getting this from
you know, this artist, and this is what it looks like.
(26:20):
You know, if you want to talk politics. And many
of them would say, yeah, we'd love to do a
little bit more of that. But you know, we don't
really feel confident at all the information that we have.
We don't really know how to parse what's being said
and what isn't. And so we created models to educate folks, right,
to get them into connected to trusted messengers, right, all
the things that you know you would do in a
(26:42):
campaign anyway, but we built kind of certain communities around
them so that we were able to kind of drive
that work city by city and from the hip Hop Summit,
I went to work for Sean Colbe's Diddy Love I
Think Now and I ran his voter Die campaign. So
whereas kind of Russell's campaign was much more ground campaign.
He traveled city by city with you know, you know,
(27:02):
he would go to a foot locker and sell shoes,
he would go down radio, he would do a town hall,
you know, and he would kind of move all of
those pieces around. Puffer really just only wanted to be
on the air and Sarah. He cut you know, relationships
with MTV, be et radio, one Clear Channel, you know,
and through those media relationships we were able to kind
(27:22):
of kind of create an arc around the conversation that
we wanted to have at the national level. And so
it was it was really I think the beauty of
that that gear, that work of testing kind of what
does it look like to have kind of a national
conversation happening, How do you really draw make it drawed
down on the ground so that it is penetrating into
community through all of these local influencers into election day.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
So just a foreshadow a bit here during that era
for you, how much did you talk about abortion, talk
about reproductive health or was it just not on the
agenda of things, the issues you talked about.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Never. Never, I don't think we ever had a conversation
about abortion back then.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
Alexis had no idea her work in political organizing would
lead her to the helm of planned parenthood. After five
more years working at the intersection of political organizing and
hip hop, Alexis branched out on our own, co founding
the Perception Institute, an anti bias research group.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
It started this institute called the Perception Institute. It was
really bring a group of social psychologists and neuroscientists together
to understand kind of how really how our brains and
bodies responded to race, and kind of doing a lot
of that work. But it was largely blackmail centric, right.
It was, you know, responding to a lot of the
police involved shootings and things like that.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
To no and surprise, Alexis built the Perception Institute into
a huge success.
Speaker 1 (28:51):
And I was doing incredible exciting work. I was working
with police departments and healthcare companies and school districts. I
had designed curriculum for Starbucks and Goldman and Prada. You know,
I was like, I was like living my best life
in all of those ways. And so I was super
excited about the work that I was doing.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
When we come back, Alexis tells us how a billboard
and a dinner got her involved in Planned Parenthood and
changed the trajectory of her life. Tell us about the
first time you met Cecil Richards, the previous head of
Planned Parenthood.
Speaker 1 (29:29):
My goodness, I can't remember exactly when I met her.
I knew of her for a very long time, and
then I was invited to a dinner with my husband
and we were at dinner together and I had been
walking in the city, I think maybe not too long before.
She'd only been a plant Parenthood for a few years,
and I remembered seeing this billboard in Soho with this
(29:53):
little black girl's face on it, and I it was
like she was cute, and I like tried to get
close to it to see what it said, and I like,
was it a Benetton ad or a gap ad or something?
And I got there and the words underneath it said
the most dangerous place for an African American or in
the womb, And it was like it just it was painful,
(30:13):
and I couldn't stop thinking about that billboard, like the
fact that our reproductive choices are demonized no matter what
we do, right, And it was just kind of lurking
in the back of my mind. And then I was
at this dinner party with her, at a small dinner
and I was like, you have to do something about
this thing, Like have you seen what's going on in Soho?
(30:35):
In Soo? They're coming for us in Soho and she
was like yeah, She's like no, it's not just so Ho.
Sounded crazy. I was like, you have to do something,
and you know, she was like, no, I think you
should do something. She was like, you know, you could,
happy to have you involved or whatever. And you know,
a couple of weeks later, maybe it's a month later,
(30:55):
I get a call from someone that i'd also known
kind of who's on the board in the space, really
new friend actually, and she's like, oh, I just wanted
to invite you to lunch with Seal Richards. I was like, okay, yeah,
it's like I just met her, Like this is weird.
And then I started to get involved in the process
of being recruited to the board, you know, and I
think it was a lot around the kind of energy
(31:16):
and passion I was bringing, and then also the work
that I knew the organization needed to do to kind
of get deeper and touch to, you know, communities like me,
like I had no idea all of the amazing work
that Planned parent had been doing communities I've obviously knew
of Planned Parenthood had been to Bland Parenthood. And so
she recruited me to the board and I eventually became
her board chair. Over the years and that just started.
(31:38):
It was an incredible opportunity to ride sides at all
with her how many years, like how long?
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Because she did you hadn't really when you had been
working on different issues, you hadn't worked on abortion before.
So was this really your first foray into repro It was,
And I think that was one of my calculations, right,
it was.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
It was one of the things that made me say,
I had looked at all of the work I had
been doing, so I'd worked on you know, political organizing.
There's nothing that I'm waking up every single day about
thinking about gender. And that's when you know, it just
all coincidence, like a kind of perfect storm. I was
thinking about that I met Cecil, I was invited to lunch,
and then I joined the board, and then that became
(32:12):
kind of my like, Okay, this is the intersection.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
Of all the work. Alexis joined the board in twenty
eleven and served as board chair from twenty thirteen to
twenty fifteen. Then in twenty eighteen, in the middle of
the Trump presidency and a fired up political climate, Cecil
Richards decided to step down. Okay, so how did you
see your role at that time? When Cecil stepped down.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
I was on the board, and I was on the
action fun boards and not the board that actually employs her,
right And I was on the I was I remember
I was at a conference with my husband and the
phone start ringing because the decision, like the kind of
the first leak came down that she was stepping down.
And yeah, I just saw my role as supporting the
(33:00):
organization to identify the next new amazing leader.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
It was clear that Alexis wanted no part in leading
the organization through an already complex political environment.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
I've seen it up really close. I don't know if
I weddy parts. I know, I mean I navigated, you know,
a lot with under her leadership and supporting her. You know,
we'd gone through kind of a decade of trap laws
and litigation and the smear campaigns and the targeting and
the shootings of clinics, and you know, I just like
(33:33):
it was, you know, it's been an intense ten years already,
and I said, you know, I just I don't I
don't think that I'm on one. The other thing I
said was that here's the thing we're always going to
fall and I don't know that as a black woman,
I want to preside over the end of rope. And
it was a kind of very conscious conversation that I
(33:53):
had with various members of the committee, you know, friends,
you know, not like in any formal process, but I
just said, like, that's the thing that weighs on me, right,
that you know, we have kind of tried to stave
off this loss for so long and then to step
into leadership at a moment when it's eminent, and that
(34:14):
felt really heavy, and I didn't want it to be
associated in some way like Barack Obama becomes president, right,
the economy is just in a free for all fall, Right,
It's like here you go.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Yeah, fixes Planned Parenthood eventually hired cecial successor, and instead
of ushering in a new era, things turned to chaos
as the organization became divided over whether their mission was
one of public health or of policy and politics, and
his anti abortion groups became stronger, and Trump pushed through
(34:47):
both of his Supreme Court nominees. It was clear that
Planned Parenthood needed a new leader.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
The organization was in a moment, a leadership vacuum, right,
leadership crisis, where we had to make a decision to
stuff great from a leader. And the board chair came
to me and said, and I guess I actually remember
where I was, what I was doing, and what I
was wearing. I had I had just signed Prada as
a client, and I was going in to meet the
(35:14):
you know, the team for the first time. So I
had to, of course, like find the perfect outfit that
would feel appropriate to walk in, you know, to not
be too over the top, too on the news, but
you know, to fit with it. And I was standing
on the corner in a very nondescript, you know, area
of the city, about to go into like you know,
kind of their you know, their headquarters, and the phone
(35:36):
rang and it was the It was the current board
chair and I she said, Oh, I just want to
catch you up on kind of where we are with
the leadership. And I said, okay, and I said, I
think I'm all caught up, because you know, I was
on executive committees and other places, so I think I'm
all caught up. And she said, no, no, I am. There's
(35:56):
another conversation I want to have with you. And she said,
if we have to move in this direction, would you
step in? And I stood there stunned on the corner
because I had that was not on my being con card.
And at the same time, I knew as a former
board chair, which she was asking of me, she needed
(36:19):
to have a conversation and she needed to know that
I would be there if she needed me. So it
wasn't quite a quite a step in. It was like
the beginning of it. And so I said, I need
to call my business partner my husband in that order,
because we were just in the middle of, you know,
(36:39):
this amazing work that we had started and it was
just gaining traction and building proof of concept. And she
was like, yeah, you got to do this. She's like,
of course, it's like they need of course. We were
going into the most critical year of our lives, like
you have got to do this. I said, okay. Then
I called Rob and he was like, yes, of course,
like you have to do this, like you know your daughters,
(36:59):
you know, like they need to you know, you are
fighting for them and you know. And it was like
and I their responses were quicker than mine, which was
a little bit you know, kind of unsettling because I
was like, oh wow, like now there's this is really
all me, Right, I have to answer this question because
there's no one else I can say. Said, oh, you know,
(37:21):
I just couldn't leave my partner. I just couldn't, you know,
kidden leave Rob to tend to everything. And I called
her back and said, I'll be here for what you need.
Congratulations on the new job. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (37:33):
Me to Alexis McGill Johnson, the New Jersey native is
the new national Acting President and CEO of Planned Parenthood.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
And so I came in during a leadership transition. I
came in July twenty nineteen, and I came in as
acting president and my job really was to stabilize the
team and the staff, right, I mean, CECIL built a
world class, you know, political organizing machine on top of
our kind of the incredible healthcare that our affiliates were
(38:03):
providing and also being strained under because of kind of
the Trump years that we were living in. And so
I started to stabilize. I turned the corner. I said,
my only condition was I want to stay long enough
to get us through twenty twenty. Right. I wanted to, like,
if I was going to build a team, I wanted
to run that election and make sure that, like I
(38:26):
got it back to running on all cylinders, so that
the next person wouldn't have to, you know, come in
and do that from scratch. And twenty twenty was twenty twenty.
And so I found myself in a situation where I
was rebuilding a team. I was now leading an organization
going through a pandemic as a healthcare provider. Right, so
(38:50):
our affiliates who run our health centers were navigating challenges
around getting access to PPE and you know, concerns about
their providers and executive orders prevent them from providing abortion
even way obviously, four years before Bobs, every woman was
grappling through that situation. And then there were the racial reckonings,
(39:10):
and then there was the election, and then there was
the insurrection, and then it was SBA in Texas, and
then it was the oral arguments those jobs and so
like in some ways. I don't you know. Somewhere along
the way I think it was when in the first
year in twenty twenty is when I became the permanent president.
(39:33):
But somewhere along the way, I don't know that I
ever stopped to stop. From that one conversation I had
on the sidewalk outside, I'm proud of it, said if
you need me, I will step in to say, I'm
putting my hat in the ring. It was there is
work we need to continue to do in order to
get us out of this moment.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
By fury right outside the Supreme Court, hy those American women,
oh the constitutional protection to get an abortion?
Speaker 5 (40:03):
The Supreme Court has reached a decision on the landmark
Roe v.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Wade case. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v.
Speaker 2 (40:11):
Wade, holding that there is no longer a federal constitutional
right to an abortion.
Speaker 5 (40:16):
You know me, I had an abortion when I was
fifteen years old. And I'm telling you this because I'm
genuinely really scared for women and girls all over this country.
Speaker 4 (40:29):
Canada, and we really need you all. This is not right.
It's not the country we know. It's not the country
I went to sleep in last night. I'm really afraid
for women's rights. And I'm really sad in my country.
I love my country so much, and I'm just so embarrassed.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
It's been just two years since Roe was overturned, and
sometimes it doesn't feel real. It's been so much so
quickly that we've barely had time to pause and process.
But through all of the chaos and the lows, Alexis
has thought fully carved out a strategic path for the organization,
one that might not have had the room to grow
had that faithful day on June twenty fourth, twenty twenty
(41:09):
two never happened.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
And I think what the you know, with the period
post oops has taught us is that it's actually helped
us put abortion back into the reproductive healthcare landscape right
because there are people with, you know, pregnancies that were
intended that no longer can get miscarriage care right or
who are you know the early stories that we heard
during SBA, when patients were being sent home to wait
(41:33):
for sepsis to set in because the doctors were too
afraid to treat them and the trauma you know that
they're experiencing, being forced to carry pregnancies that are no
longer viable and so I think there is a you know,
what is happening. I think in this period is kind
of an understanding that these criminalizing abortion and actually makes
(41:53):
pregnancy less safe. That providers no longer want to live
in states that have banned the procedure right because they
don't want to be criminalized themselves. So that's going to
have it impact not just on you know, again pregnancy care,
but it's also going to ripple into the workforce. People
don't want to be sart live in states where they
can't decide that that's the place where they want to
start to raise a family.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
So with all that, your mindset must have flipped at
some point that I'm not just stabilizing, I'm building.
Speaker 4 (42:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
So I talked to a lot of people when I
joined as an interim around kind of what are some
best practices as an interpret Like, I knew there were
things that obviously I had been around for a decade.
I knew kind of things that needed to be fixed,
things that we needed to kind of address relationships I
wanted to restore again, getting the organization to be like healthy,
(42:43):
you know, and then to hand it off and wait
in a way and you know, and wanting to feel
good about what that work was. And somewhere in the
first year, first few months, maybe even one of my
colleagues in the Federation said, you know, like you feel
really tentative to me, like you know, your title is
acting president, but you are the president. And I had
(43:07):
like this thought of, like, you know, when you go
and you stay in somebody's house and it's like really
lovely and so well appointed, and you want when you're leaving,
you want everything to be exactly as you found it, right,
Like the pillow is fluffed up, exactly as you found it,
Like you're fixing up the bathroom and making sure like
you know, even though you know someone's going to come
behind you and do that, and like you are doing
all of it because you want to make it as
(43:27):
perfect as possible. And I felt like I was fluffing
up the pillows inside of the organization and really not
allowing myself the opportunity to do the fixing. And so
I reflected on it in that moment and later she
said to me, here's my advice, drive it like you
stole it. And I was like it was something really
freeing about saying, yeah, you know what, I am the president.
(43:52):
It was my Sasha fears. You know, Alexis came back right,
and I'm like, yeah, I am the president, and I
I am going to lead this organization through this crisis.
I'm going to lead this organization through this crazy election.
And I think that maybe energy is what drove me
into kind of a new conversation and allowed me to be.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
Become own it. So what did that look like for
you once you were owning it? Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1 (44:19):
It really was about setting the course for for where
we are now, right, it was it was writing the
op ed Margaret Sanger in the New York Times.
Speaker 2 (44:29):
The op ed Alexis is referring to is her fiery
article she penned in twenty twenty one titled I'm the
Head of Planned Parenthood. We're done making excuses for our founder.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
Really owning our kind of racial history and kind of
reckoning not so much with her right, since I put
in the piece like I don't know what was in
her heart right, but reckoning with as a movement that
has been predominantly white, lead the work that we needed
to do to interrogate our own systems and structures in
(45:01):
order to make ourselves a place of belonging for people
who look like me, and what that work would mean.
It meant, you know, doing a kind of similar inquiry
around what we knew would happen when Row fell, right,
questions that I started to ask the board very early on,
(45:22):
literally a year almost to the date that of the
DABS decision. I was in a board meeting and I
asked them, who are we going to be when we
are no longer defending Row? Do we have an answer
to that question? Because this is an organization that's really
built to defend, and we need to build a different
muscle around imagination, right, We need to understand the new
(45:43):
reality that people are going to be in, not just
for the short term, right, because like flying people around
the country, people driving five hundred miles just to get
access to medication, that is not a long term strategy.
So what is our new vision? So like starting to
see those questions, and I think in many ways there
is like I operate a little bit like professor in chief.
(46:05):
You can probably see that, but like asking, you know,
I do believe in the power of the question, right,
and like asking the really hard, high level questions so
that we're not just engaging in the tactics to move
us forward, but really starting to think about what do
we need to dismantle and rebuild in a moment.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
And I think a lot of people want to know
what is the answer to that, Like who are we
if we're not defending row? How do we think about
our relationship to abortion, access to all of reproductive care
moving forward?
Speaker 1 (46:34):
Look, I mean I think we have a plan, right,
It's a and I think it's one that we haven't
really talked through as much, that kind of a movement perspective, right,
But you know, I've been toughly of late talking about
we need to understand the road from twenty twenty four
to twenty forty. That there's no magic bullet that is
going to automatically be like, okay, we're back into the constitution.
(46:56):
This has been a fifty year strategy, right. The opposition
has had a long view, Right, So they've played a
long game, and they have spent decades taking over through
jerrymandering and you know, weaponizing rules in courts, taking over
state houses, taking over the judiciary. And that is why
we are here. So they have created that kind of
(47:16):
political advantage. So our job is to really understand where
our leavers and levers are it starts with twenty twenty four, right,
you know, again, this year is going to be an
incredibly important year where we have to ensure that the
Biden Harris administration stays in power, that we win back
(47:38):
the House, you know, with its small margins, and you know,
and that we we are able to hold and expand
the Senate with the belief that this is a Senate
the Senate that we get is one that will engage
in filibusta reform. That is, that is the immediate path.
That's what allows us to have federal legislation codified. Now
(47:59):
that is obviously, you know, kind of what we are
focusing on this year, and we believe it's inherently doable
and given the circumstances we are, we still hold it
as a you know, it's also aspirational right in this book,
but it's a lot of pieces that have to come
into play for us to get that, and that's what
we are working feverishly towards. We also know we're going
(48:19):
to have to continueified state by state, ballid initiative by
ballid initiative. And I know that what we have seen,
you know, over the year has been that when reproductive
freedom's on the ballot, when abortions on the ballot, we win.
So we know the energy is there across state, across
you know, demographics, across party. And then there are litigating
strategies around identify with the next Supreme Court is going
(48:43):
to need to hear what are the questions the framework
that we need to be laying the ground for to
get back into the constitution. And I think the New
York BALLID initiative, the twenty twenty four New York BAID
initiative is I think one of the best rights based
frameworks that we can looking towards in order to kind
of establish quality. Sorry, just to go back to me,
(49:05):
you said, like, you know, who are we going to be?
I think the flaw in my question really is as
if Roe was enough right. Row had long been undermined
by these laws that allowed for the right but not
for access, and so we have actually this new opportunity
to build back in a different way than saying to
(49:26):
the Biden administration we should just build Row back better.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
Something I think about a lot as a reformed politico
is the difference between policy change and culture change, and
that culture change is something political leaders like Alexis often
have a hard time taking into account, but after years
writing the playbook of how politics can permeate culture, Alexis
has some ideas.
Speaker 1 (49:49):
When I think that the cultural strategies, the way in
which we need to change behavior through culture, or shift
the way we think about equality through culture, the way
we respond to moments like the summer of twenty twenty three,
when you know, you had Beyonce and Barbie and Taylor
pumping billions of dollars into the economy, and you've got
young people now who are like, with someone of my
(50:12):
staff not too long ago was like, yeah, you know menopause,
I'm not doing that. I was like, she's going to
create something totally brand new and she probably won't ever
go through. You know, most of us were raised to
be like a rite of ass it, like no, I'm
not doing that. So like, that's the energy that I
(50:32):
think is part of what we are seeing in this
post Rome moment, right, this like this recognition that rights
actually can be taken away, the freedoms can be taken away,
and I think the f're and the fire of people
who are like, yeah, we're not doing that. So I
(50:52):
actually think that you know, one of the one of
the things that that we will see culturally, right is
people will learn more about how to access care, they
will support each other in doing that, and that is
going to be, you know, I think something that challenges
the ability for them to enforce the policies, and so
(51:16):
I think we can fight and this is what we
are trained to do right at Plan, parent Plan Parent
at Action Fund. You know, our job is to you know,
vigorously build the laws that defend the patients and the
providers and allow them to get access and to make
sure that you know, anybody wants an abortion can get
an abortion, that we get the resources to them, whether
(51:38):
they need to get out of state, that we protect.
You know, we fight for the things like shield laws
to protect the providers who are sending you know, who
are able to send pills through telehealth. We are fighting,
you know, the policies around telehealth and all of those
sorts of things to ensure access. We're obviously fighting for
the right to distribute mifipristone. All of those things I think,
(51:58):
you know, are part of a stress that allows people
to think about the risks that they will take in
terms of accessing care from where they are, and I
think that that is the culture shift, the behavior shift
that we will associate of people being able to get
access to care is also going to be something that
(52:18):
shifts the way we understand how useful policies are. And
I think that people will find ways to get access
to abortion because that is what they've always done, and
our job is to make sure that we are helping
them get access where they can legally and being able
to recognize and understand the field in which they are
(52:39):
engaging in calculated risks. The end of the day, what
I want is for everybody to know what an abortion is,
an actual abortion is. I want people to know where
to get one, who to call right. I want them
to know that Planned Parenthood will be there to support
them and that we will be there to defend them
because we are going to fight on the policy level.
We're going to ensure that we have the elected people
(53:00):
there to support them, and we're going to ensure that
we're working with all of the folks will be there
to support them on there, you know, on their defense
should they be criminalized. I mean, I think that is
the humane thing to do. Well.
Speaker 2 (53:13):
I want to go back to you Alexis personally and
how you got here. Do you think there's a moment that,
now that you look back, was there a moment for
you that at the time you thought it was like, Ugh,
I can't get myself out of this, I can't believe
I'm in this position. And now that you look back
in it, you see it as I've been really having
built the groundwork for the success that you have now.
Speaker 1 (53:34):
I don't know that I can pinpoint the moment in time.
What I can tell you is that the day of
jobs as heavy and as hard and emotional, even though
we knew it was coming, like we even got the leak,
we knew it was coming. Even as hard as that
moment was, there was something inside of me that felt
(53:54):
like I had been preparing for this race all along.
I felt like I understood the power of organizing in
that moment, I understood the power of talking across communities
and work I had done at perception and understanding the
brain science and where people get blocked in their anxiety
about talking about things like abortion, things that are stigmatized.
(54:14):
I kind of could understand the kind of movement equations
that I had been kind of drawing, drawing through the
space the kind of theories that I had been starting
to put in play around why even in the moment
of abortion loss, we still had to invest proactively into
black health equity, in particular in areas where they would
no longer be able to get access in state. And
(54:37):
I felt like, I felt like like like that moment,
like I am here for a reason, right, I have
been called into this space for a reason, and you know,
maybe for such a time as this, and that the
darkness of the day, I think helped me find the strength.
Speaker 2 (54:55):
Thank you so much, Alexis for joining us.
Speaker 1 (54:58):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (55:01):
Alexis continues to serve as President and CEO of Planned
Parenthood Action Fund and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America,
and it's continuing to navigate the complex landscape in a
post row world with grace and fortitude. We're an electioneer
and this issue matters. I hope this conversation reignited the
same spark that is dimmed over the years and inspired
(55:23):
you to get involved to protect women's rights over their
own bodies and health. So talk to your friends and
your community and vote please. You can find links and
resources to Planned Parenthood and the Action fund and more
on our website. You can follow Alexis on Instagram at
Alexis MJPP and be sure to also follow Planned Parenthood
at Planned Parenthood. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to
(55:49):
this episode of she Pivots. If you made it this far,
you're a true pivoter, so thanks for being part of
this community. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and if
you did leave us a rating, please be nice tell
your friends about us. To learn more about our guests,
follow us on Instagram at she Pivots the Podcast, or
sign up for our newsletter where you can get exclusive
(56:09):
behind the scenes content, or on our website she Pivots
the Podcast talk to You Next Week special thanks to
the she Pivots team, Executive producer Emily eda Velosik, Associate
producer and social media connoisseur Hannah Cousins, Research director Christine Dickinson,
Events and logistics coordinator Madeline Snovak, and audio editor and
(56:33):
mixer Nina Pollock.
Speaker 1 (56:35):
I endorse she Pivots.
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