Speaker 1: I'm Sam Edis and I'm Amy Nelson. Welcome to What's
Speaker 1: Her Story? With Sam and Amy. This is a show
Speaker 1: about the world's most remarkable women, their professional and personal journeys. Together,
Speaker 1: we'll hear from Gold medalists, best selling authors, and leaders
Speaker 1: of the world's most iconic brands. Listen every Thursday, or
Speaker 1: join the conversation anytime on Instagram at What's Her Story Podcast.
Speaker 1: Gloria Felt was the CEO and President of Planned Parenthood
Speaker 1: from to two thousand five, the world's largest reproductive health
Speaker 1: and advocacy organization. She was named by Vanity Fair one
Speaker 1: of America's Top two hundred Women Leaders, Legends and Trailblazers,
Speaker 1: and the Glamour Women of the Year. Most people know
Speaker 1: you today as a women's leadership expert, but your history
Speaker 1: is perhaps one of the most fascinating things about you.
Speaker 1: You went from being a teen mom to leading Planned Parenthood. Well,
Speaker 1: I think it was very symmetrical that I would go
Speaker 1: from being knowing what it's like to be a very
Speaker 1: young mother to understanding the struggles that women have to
Speaker 1: wanting to help all women be able to plan in
Speaker 1: space their childbearing, and so it really was a fairly
Speaker 1: seamless thing. But I really got my my grounding in
Speaker 1: volunteer work that I did for the civil rights movement.
Speaker 1: After I had had my three children and I was
Speaker 1: twenty years old, and I sort of woke up. And
Speaker 1: partly it was because the birth control pill came out.
Speaker 1: Right about this, share with us, what was it like
Speaker 1: to become a teen mom? Was it intentional? Was it
Speaker 1: a surprise? How did people in your family react? It
Speaker 1: didn't take me long to realize I had not made
Speaker 1: the wisest choice. But here's the thing. I had grown
Speaker 1: up in small Texas towns. The little town where I
Speaker 1: went to high school called Stanford is very like if
Speaker 1: you've ever seen the movie or read the book The
Speaker 1: Last Picture Show by Larry McMurtry. It's one of those
Speaker 1: dying West Texas towns. And it was a great place
Speaker 1: to be a teenager because you could you know, it
Speaker 1: was like everybody knew everybody and it was one great community.
Speaker 1: It felt that way. But girls were not given aspirations
Speaker 1: for careers or even in particular going to college. The
Speaker 1: girls who were rewarded were those who were engaged and
Speaker 1: married early, like in high school or right out of
Speaker 1: high school and having children and being a support system
Speaker 1: for everybody else. It was not unrelated that my family
Speaker 1: is the only Jewish family in town in the Bible Belt,
Speaker 1: where the first question everybody asked you is where you
Speaker 1: go to church? And it was you know, even to
Speaker 1: this day, my high school colleagues, who I still love
Speaker 1: and in touch and in touch with, they never let
Speaker 1: me forget that I am different. They never let me
Speaker 1: forget that. And I hated being different because what does
Speaker 1: a teenager want. A teenager wants to fit in. A
Speaker 1: teenager wants to be the class favorite, which I got
Speaker 1: to be. A teenage girl in football crazy Texas wants
Speaker 1: to be a cheerleader, which I got to be. So
Speaker 1: you know, I got to be the All American girl.
Speaker 1: And that was that was the flip side of that
Speaker 1: was that I bought the whole culture. You know, there
Speaker 1: was no sex education other than a book that my
Speaker 1: father gave me when I was thirteen, Bless his Heart,
Speaker 1: which made me very popular at summer camp. But and
Speaker 1: it got just completely worn out by all all my
Speaker 1: friends at summer camp. And you know, I hadn't really
Speaker 1: I would say the kinds of things that we talk
Speaker 1: a lot about now, Teaching our children just didn't happen.
Speaker 1: Then you were kind of allowed to just grow up.
Speaker 1: And I made not the wisest choices, and yet at
Speaker 1: the same time life turned out pretty well. So I
Speaker 1: think that having those children at that stage of my
Speaker 1: life forced me to grow up really quickly, forced me
Speaker 1: to take on levels of responsibility that taught me the
Speaker 1: things that I needed to know later on when I
Speaker 1: became a CEO. What kind of a mom were you
Speaker 1: then in Texas? And what kind of a mom was I?
Speaker 1: You'd have to ask my children that, Um they were um,
Speaker 1: you know, as one of my children said, you did
Speaker 1: the best you could. And I think that there's a
Speaker 1: lot of truth of that. I was a very engaged
Speaker 1: mom and my children were the center of my life,
Speaker 1: partly because I had ideas about how I wanted them
Speaker 1: to grow up. And of course, your children never do
Speaker 1: what you think you want them to do. But I
Speaker 1: did have ideas about that that I tried to inculcate
Speaker 1: and uh to, you know, to a greater or lesser extent.
Speaker 1: But there again, my children grew up in Odessa, Texas,
Speaker 1: the home of Friday night lights, and they graduated from
Speaker 1: Permian High School. So I'm telling you that was the
Speaker 1: story of our life, right there, a documentary of our life.
Speaker 1: And so the culture had changed. The culture changes for
Speaker 1: each generation, and you may think you know how you
Speaker 1: want to raise your children, but something will be different
Speaker 1: for them that you will not understand. At that point,
Speaker 1: you were a teen mom raising kids with this husband
Speaker 1: who was also a teenager. Right. What led to the
Speaker 1: end of your marriage and what was your ambition like
Speaker 1: at that point. Did you always just think you were
Speaker 1: going to be a wife and that was it. I
Speaker 1: wanted to be the perfect Susie homemaker wife, and then
Speaker 1: I found out it wasn't quite as much fun as
Speaker 1: I thought it was going to be. So I started
Speaker 1: to college when my youngest was four months old, and
Speaker 1: as I started learning about the world and being more
Speaker 1: a part of the world outside of my family, I
Speaker 1: started changing. But things were also changing in society. You
Speaker 1: asked me about my husband. He was nineteen when we
Speaker 1: were married, and I would say that as parents who
Speaker 1: were that young, we did pretty well, and we were fortunate.
Speaker 1: We always had a roof over our head, and we
Speaker 1: we never had a lot of money, but we weren't destitute,
Speaker 1: and we had parents who were reasonably supportive. I always
Speaker 1: say my my father had a clothing factory, so I
Speaker 1: always had fabric and I made clothes for everybody. And
Speaker 1: my ex husband's family had a farm, so I always
Speaker 1: had great food. So we were good. But as with
Speaker 1: most teenage marriages after eighteen years, by that time we
Speaker 1: had just become completely different people from each other. And um,
Speaker 1: we still respect each other, we're still in touch, but
Speaker 1: it was time to move on for both of us.
Speaker 1: When you went back to college when your youngest child
Speaker 1: was four months old, like, that wasn't probably expected, right,
Speaker 1: maybe even by yourself. It's like, how did your family
Speaker 1: react to that? How did your husband react to that?
Speaker 1: Your parents? Like, what did they think of you? My
Speaker 1: family was delighted because they had always assumed I would
Speaker 1: go to college, and you know that I would at
Speaker 1: least have an education, whether I did it as a
Speaker 1: fessional thing or not. They they valued education, and I
Speaker 1: remember my father gave me fifty dollars for my first
Speaker 1: semester's tuition, and my husband's parents were not so appreciative
Speaker 1: of it. They thought it was not a good idea
Speaker 1: for me to leave the children even the two days
Speaker 1: a week that I that I took my classes. I
Speaker 1: was very careful to take my classes all Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Speaker 1: And there was a lovely young woman who was a
Speaker 1: neighbor who would come to our house and knew the
Speaker 1: children and took care of them. So I knew they
Speaker 1: were they were well taken care of. But my husband's
Speaker 1: family was not so pleased. Although they weren't terribly vocal
Speaker 1: about it, I would say that that my husband was
Speaker 1: reasonably supportive. He wasn't he wasn't going to change his behavior.
Speaker 1: As long as I was still doing the cooking and
Speaker 1: cleaning and taking care of the kids, he was fine
Speaker 1: with it. So it took me twelve years to finish
Speaker 1: because I was taking courses more slowly because there was
Speaker 1: only a community college in Odessa, Texas at the time.
Speaker 1: And that was good, as it turns out, because it
Speaker 1: gave me some time to get involved in community service work.
Speaker 1: You know, from my youngest years, I saw my grandmother volunteering.
Speaker 1: My my mother and father were you know, they volunteered
Speaker 1: for things, and so following that pattern, I got involved
Speaker 1: with the civil rights movement, and that's where I learned
Speaker 1: that people can change things. People working together can change things,
Speaker 1: even if they start with very little power. At what
Speaker 1: point did you decide to join Planned Parenthood? As I
Speaker 1: was doing the work in the civil rights movement, I
Speaker 1: noticed that women were doing the frontline work and the
Speaker 1: men were getting most of the leadership positions on credit.
Speaker 1: So you know, the lightbulbs start going off, and I
Speaker 1: started getting more interested in helping women in general, and
Speaker 1: I was I was volunteering for a head Start, and
Speaker 1: then I was offered a job at head Start, so
Speaker 1: I was. I taught head Start for five years and
Speaker 1: during that time, one of my teaching colleagues, and believe
Speaker 1: it or not, the priest of her church, we're on
Speaker 1: the local plan parented board. It was a brand new
Speaker 1: little affiliate in the early nineteen seventies, and she asked
Speaker 1: me to do some volunteer work for Planned Parenthood. And
Speaker 1: that was actually my introduction to the organization. So it
Speaker 1: wasn't a oh, my goodness, I'm going to go get
Speaker 1: involved with Planned Parenthood. It was my colleague said, would
Speaker 1: you serve on this committee? And I said yes, and
Speaker 1: I went to my first They invited me to attend
Speaker 1: a board meeting So I went to my first board
Speaker 1: meeting and they were arguing about whether to serve teens
Speaker 1: on their own consent. Again, as a teen mom, I'm thinking, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you should. And they finally voted that after a girl
Speaker 1: had had one quote illegitimate child, then she could get
Speaker 1: birth control on her own consent. And the county judge
Speaker 1: was on the board, this tall, lanky guy, and he
Speaker 1: leans back in his chair and puts his boots boot
Speaker 1: up on the table and he says, well, now, if
Speaker 1: that ain't shutting the barn door after the cow's done
Speaker 1: got out, And I'm like, what is this organization? Who
Speaker 1: are these people? So I really didn't have anything to
Speaker 1: do with it for a while. I mean it was
Speaker 1: I wasn't that turned off, but I you know, I
Speaker 1: just didn't get that engaged with it. So a few
Speaker 1: years later, the University of Texas opens a branch in Odessa.
Speaker 1: I enrolled so I can finish my degree, planning to
Speaker 1: be a high school social studies teacher. And the last
Speaker 1: course that I took was an ecology course, and I
Speaker 1: decided I would do my paper on this little plan
Speaker 1: parent an affiliate. I called the executive director and ask
Speaker 1: her if I could interview her. And I interviewed her,
Speaker 1: a nurse practitioner, a couple of board members, and two
Speaker 1: weeks later she called me and she said, I'm leaving.
Speaker 1: I think you should submit a resume. And I thought, well,
Speaker 1: I've never had a formal job interview before. I've never
Speaker 1: had a resume. I'm imminently unqualified. I am in no
Speaker 1: danger of being hired, but it'll be great experience to
Speaker 1: go and have this interview. And so I went for
Speaker 1: an interview, and then I went for a second interview,
Speaker 1: and lo and behold they offered me the job. And
Speaker 1: I have no idea to this day why I was
Speaker 1: foolish enough to say yes when I had no idea
Speaker 1: what I was doing. But it sounded kind of interesting,
Speaker 1: so I said yes, and there we are. Thirty years later,
Speaker 1: I retired as the national President. You just never know
Speaker 1: where life will take you if you just say yes. Well,
Speaker 1: Amy and I always say that we're we're big yes people.
Speaker 1: We love to say yes to things. And there's so
Speaker 1: much rhetoric for women on how you should say no
Speaker 1: and say no to all these opportunities, and and doors
Speaker 1: closed when you say no, and they open when you
Speaker 1: say yes. And so when you say something, you just
Speaker 1: said something that struck me. You said, I don't know
Speaker 1: why I was foolish enough to take it, But I
Speaker 1: really don't think that speaks to who you are. You
Speaker 1: are such a positive person, and through all of the
Speaker 1: battles you face throughout your life, you maintain a smile
Speaker 1: and a positivity about people working together. Where does that
Speaker 1: come from? It's so funny. I am often asked, particularly
Speaker 1: by younger women, why I look like I'm so optimistic
Speaker 1: in spite of all of the things that they're encountering
Speaker 1: every day. So when I look back, I can say, well,
Speaker 1: it's because I have seen that you can make change.
Speaker 1: And again, I'll go back to those early days of
Speaker 1: seeing in the Civil rights movement people without any power,
Speaker 1: without any money, yet getting together and making some of
Speaker 1: the most profound and fundamental change for our whole country,
Speaker 1: and and just knowing that you can, you can have
Speaker 1: an impact, knowing that what you do does make a difference,
Speaker 1: really drives me. And I would say that the other
Speaker 1: piece of it for me is that at this point
Speaker 1: in my life, almost every day I get either an
Speaker 1: email or a call or something comes from someone that
Speaker 1: says you helped me in this way. You you saved
Speaker 1: my life. You you know now with the courses that
Speaker 1: I'm teaching, I I hear, Okay, I took this course,
Speaker 1: and I would have never valued myself enough to apply
Speaker 1: for that next job. But now I know the value
Speaker 1: I bring and so I did and I got it.
Speaker 1: And those are the things that you know, even the
Speaker 1: small things that feed my passion, that feed my optimism,
Speaker 1: and to know that that we can we can make
Speaker 1: change in this world. We can do that. And now
Speaker 1: a quick later in your life, you wrote a book
Speaker 1: about power, women in power, and women's relationship to power.
Speaker 1: I think I have a good sense of where your
Speaker 1: relationship is now to power, and I think it's part
Speaker 1: of your optimism. But like, where was your relationship with
Speaker 1: power at that point in your life? You know where,
Speaker 1: You've graduated college, You've been part of the civil rights movement,
Speaker 1: You've worked for head Start for five years. At this point,
Speaker 1: you have raised three kids. Really, so, like, what was
Speaker 1: your relationship with power? Like? Then I have to answer
Speaker 1: that question by going back to my teen years where
Speaker 1: I did not feel that I had power, I did
Speaker 1: not feel that I had the ability to determine the
Speaker 1: course of my own life. And it was obviously was
Speaker 1: very responsive instead of proactive about things. And I I'm
Speaker 1: fortunate that my father always told me I could do
Speaker 1: anything my pretty little head desired. That was his language.
Speaker 1: And I witnessed my mother a woman who felt she
Speaker 1: couldn't in fact, do much of anything that she wanted
Speaker 1: to do. That she was always doing what someone else
Speaker 1: wanted her to do, and it was not. Her big
Speaker 1: rebellion in life was at fifty she became a c
Speaker 1: p A and that was it was huge, but because
Speaker 1: she was extremely brilliant, So my female role model was
Speaker 1: not empowered, as it were. But I did have that
Speaker 1: little voice in the back of my head that kept
Speaker 1: coming back to me. So once I had started to
Speaker 1: college and started on you know, meeting other women who
Speaker 1: were involved in the community or or involved in careers,
Speaker 1: I slowly began to realize that I guess I do.
Speaker 1: I guess I can determine the course of my fate
Speaker 1: as opposed to simply letting it happen to me. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't any one thing. It was a lengthy process,
Speaker 1: and I will tell you to this day, I still
Speaker 1: have my moments I will catch myself, you know, I
Speaker 1: will catch myself using language that sounds like I'm a
Speaker 1: powerless little girl, and I'm like, what's wrong with you?
Speaker 1: But these cultural things are hard to overcome. However, the
Speaker 1: the the other piece of that is that the more
Speaker 1: you use your courage muscles, the more powerful you will feel.
Speaker 1: And so taking risks. I love seeing people encouraging young
Speaker 1: girls today to play sports and to take all kinds
Speaker 1: of risks, because that's how you get a feeling of
Speaker 1: being powerful, and that's how you grow those courage muscles
Speaker 1: and in willingness to take on things even if you
Speaker 1: may not succeed. So what was it like for you
Speaker 1: to take over a national role at Planned Parenthood. There's
Speaker 1: a story I have to tell you about when it
Speaker 1: was all happening that I was having to decide whether
Speaker 1: to even apply for that position. So I ran the
Speaker 1: affiliate in West Texas for four years. At that point
Speaker 1: I was ready to move to a larger community, larger affiliate.
Speaker 1: The I went to Phoenix. I I was in Phoenix
Speaker 1: and ran the Arizona affiliate for eight years, for eighteen years,
Speaker 1: and at that point I was getting kind of bored
Speaker 1: I was ready to I wanted to start writing books then.
Speaker 1: That was actually my goal at that time, and I
Speaker 1: had set up my life so that I could take
Speaker 1: a year or two off and and write a book.
Speaker 1: And at that time there was an opening for the
Speaker 1: national Planned Parenthood position, and I was being heavily, heavily
Speaker 1: heavily recruited. About that time, my husband and I went
Speaker 1: on a hike on the Milford Track in New Zealand,
Speaker 1: and um, I discovered the first day that I would
Speaker 1: have to face some fears that I didn't know I
Speaker 1: was going to have to face. I am terrified of
Speaker 1: suspension bridges, and it turned doubt that I would have
Speaker 1: to cross twenty two really rickety. I mean these weren't
Speaker 1: like nice metal big bridges like we see here, but
Speaker 1: there's little rickety wooden planks with maybe one line of
Speaker 1: wire on the side that you could hold onto. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean I freeze up. I just I'm terrified. And
Speaker 1: I get to the first bridge and I'm clutching my
Speaker 1: walking stick like like it will save me, and people
Speaker 1: are lining up behind me. Only one person at a
Speaker 1: time can cross this bridge. So I start across the
Speaker 1: bridge finally by by telling myself three things. Number One,
Speaker 1: you have to keep your vision, your eyes on the
Speaker 1: other side where you want to go, your intention. You
Speaker 1: have to take a deep breath and have the courage
Speaker 1: to believe you can get there. And then finally, you
Speaker 1: have to take the action, because without the action, none
Speaker 1: of the rest of it really matters. You have to
Speaker 1: start putting one ft in front of the other, in
Speaker 1: front of the other, in front of the other, until
Speaker 1: you get to the other side. And while I was
Speaker 1: doing that, my life was passing in front of my
Speaker 1: my mind, and I I was realizing that I just
Speaker 1: before I had left, I had found out that I
Speaker 1: was the candidate they wanted and I was going to
Speaker 1: have to decide if I would take that job. And
Speaker 1: it was a time when there were some problems. There was,
Speaker 1: I mean, it was not only that the political situation
Speaker 1: was extremely tense, a lot like it is today. But
Speaker 1: that didn't really bother me. People were getting murdered, people
Speaker 1: were getting I was getting personally stalked at home, getting
Speaker 1: neo Nazi calls on my home phone. I had my
Speaker 1: personal I mean, you know, I have was picketers, and
Speaker 1: you know, I knew it was a dangerous physically dangerous
Speaker 1: thing to do. I knew that I would have to
Speaker 1: bring the entire organization through a process of dealing with
Speaker 1: it emotionally and otherwise. It was a time when the
Speaker 1: organization had had several leadership changes, like four leadership changes
Speaker 1: in five years, so they're all kinds of problems. And
Speaker 1: this was all flashing in front of me in this
Speaker 1: short period of time that I'm going across the bridge.
Speaker 1: By the time I got to the other side, I
Speaker 1: realized a few things. One is that you know, I
Speaker 1: didn't lose my fear even after crossing all twenty two
Speaker 1: suspension bridges, but I learned that I could do it.
Speaker 1: And the other thing I learned was sometimes you have
Speaker 1: to cross that bridge sometimes at your moment, Sometimes you
Speaker 1: have to just not worry about the raging river below
Speaker 1: or the jagged rocks on the side. If you're the
Speaker 1: right person to do something, and you know that you are,
Speaker 1: and they know that you are, you have to stand
Speaker 1: up in the moment and take that opportunity. And it
Speaker 1: was an opportunity. It was a great opportunity for all
Speaker 1: of the travails, uh, you know, it was it was
Speaker 1: a great opportunity to be able to practically reconstruct an organization.
Speaker 1: I took the whole organization through a twenty five year
Speaker 1: out visioning process, and whole sets of new programs started
Speaker 1: growth again, got contraceptive coverage by insurance plans on the
Speaker 1: political front, and that was all great, um, but it
Speaker 1: was also exhausting and very exhausting. So I wore myself out.
Speaker 1: I really literally just wore myself out. You said, you
Speaker 1: really change the organization. You brought what I think is
Speaker 1: really an entrepreneurial spirit to a very established nonprofit. Like
Speaker 1: do those two things can they work together? I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have thoughts so, but they do. I wouldn't have thought so.
Speaker 1: And you probably heard the saying that Ginger did everything
Speaker 1: Fred did but backwards and in high heels, and leading
Speaker 1: a nonprofit is a lot like that. You have to
Speaker 1: have all the business sense, but you do it where
Speaker 1: you don't have as much money or access to resources.
Speaker 1: And we we did have to be very entrepreneurial because
Speaker 1: there were so many changes in the health care system,
Speaker 1: so ways that we were able to provide women's healthcare
Speaker 1: at low fees or no fees for the women who
Speaker 1: couldn't afford it. We had to be very scrappy. You know,
Speaker 1: we we literally created you know what you see now
Speaker 1: as the on every corner little uh dock in the box.
Speaker 1: I call them the urgent care centers. I'm telling you
Speaker 1: planned parent to it, invented that little neighborhood clinic that
Speaker 1: is very responsive to the needs of people. Doesn't do
Speaker 1: every service, but you do what you do well, and
Speaker 1: you do it at a price people that can afford,
Speaker 1: and with good customer service. And you know, we we
Speaker 1: sort of invented that. And also the use of nurse
Speaker 1: practitioners as clinicians and providers and found that the patients
Speaker 1: literally like that better because nurses are trained more in
Speaker 1: an educational mode, you know, to really talk to people.
Speaker 1: So that part of it was really fun. That part
Speaker 1: of it was fun, And I guess I know my
Speaker 1: father was an entrepreneur, and I guess I had just
Speaker 1: ingested some of that in my daily life with my family,
Speaker 1: and to this day I enjoy that that aspect of
Speaker 1: what I do in a nonprofit. You were also a
Speaker 1: pioneer of getting contraception covered by insurance. How did you
Speaker 1: make that happen? It wasn't just me, for sure, there
Speaker 1: were people who had started seeing the injustice of it.
Speaker 1: And for example, there was a young woman in Seattle,
Speaker 1: a young pharmacist who discovered that her pharmacy didn't cover
Speaker 1: her birth control pills, and so she sued them. And
Speaker 1: that was how I got got, you know, aware of
Speaker 1: what was going on. You know, sometimes there's an injustice
Speaker 1: you don't even see because it's invisible. Women were just
Speaker 1: accustomed to paying for their pills and we didn't even
Speaker 1: question it. Right well, there were a couple of states
Speaker 1: where they had started being some grassroots movements to get
Speaker 1: insurance covered, and so I quickly saw that this was
Speaker 1: one of those things that almost everyone could coalesce around.
Speaker 1: That we could get some Republicans then I don't know
Speaker 1: that we could. Now we could get Republicans and Democrats
Speaker 1: to come together on something that would prevent the need
Speaker 1: for abortion. For one thing, and that was it made
Speaker 1: such economic sense because being able to have children when
Speaker 1: you're ready to have children results in better prenatal care
Speaker 1: outcomes that results, and it enables women to enter the workforce.
Speaker 1: All of those things are are great intellectual arguments, and
Speaker 1: so I really I saw that as being something that
Speaker 1: could bring a very fractured country together around an issue
Speaker 1: because Americans use birth control at some point lives for
Speaker 1: goodness sake, so almost everybody thinks contraception is a good thing.
Speaker 1: So that was one part of it. It was that
Speaker 1: big macro concept of how could we how could really
Speaker 1: have a national dialogue about something that could bring people
Speaker 1: together on issues that had been very fractured and contentious.
Speaker 1: So that was one. But the other thing was it
Speaker 1: was that that's just the injustice of women not getting
Speaker 1: this basic healthcare paid for, and we didn't even hadn't
Speaker 1: even been being noisy about it. So I started trying
Speaker 1: to get legislation, and we ended up the first piece
Speaker 1: of federal legislation we got was in the Federal Employees
Speaker 1: Insurance Program and that is the largest insurance plan in
Speaker 1: the country. So once that insurance plan covered it, most
Speaker 1: other plans started to follow suit. And then these this
Speaker 1: legislation started bubbling up from the states as well individual states.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing to know, couldn't get any media
Speaker 1: coverage of it at all. Couldn't get any public, you know,
Speaker 1: big public discussion of it until Viagra viaggregates approved by
Speaker 1: the f d A, and suddenly every insurance plan is
Speaker 1: covering viagra. Well, the next day I'm on Good Morning
Speaker 1: America because suddenly it's become a big issue. It's like,
Speaker 1: what insurance plans will cover viagra, which is hardly necessary.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's fine, it's good, but necessary. No birth
Speaker 1: control for women is a necessary health care provision. And
Speaker 1: so that's when it became a big public issue and
Speaker 1: it got a lot more attention, and then we were
Speaker 1: able to make it more of a normalized thing. And
Speaker 1: now a quick break. Over the course of the years,
Speaker 1: I imagine your relationship with money has changed enormously. How
Speaker 1: did it evolve from those teen years to today? You're
Speaker 1: so right, so right saying my relationship with money has
Speaker 1: changed a great deal. When I was very young, I
Speaker 1: discounted the importance of financial stability or just you know,
Speaker 1: financial capability. I really discounted it. And probably that's because
Speaker 1: although we were never wealthy, I never had to worry
Speaker 1: about the next dime. And I think when you grow
Speaker 1: up in abject poverty, you learn very quickly how important
Speaker 1: money is, and so I I didn't really pay that
Speaker 1: much attention to it. I hate to say this, but
Speaker 1: I never negotiated my salary until I became the national
Speaker 1: President of Planned Parenthood, and even then I didn't negotiate
Speaker 1: it because it was more than I had been making,
Speaker 1: sounded like a lot. Then I came to New York
Speaker 1: and I had to figure out how to pay for
Speaker 1: a New York apartment. So at that point I went
Speaker 1: back and I renegotiated because it was clear that I
Speaker 1: had greatly undervalued myself and slowly as time has gone on,
Speaker 1: and partly this is because of my study of women's
Speaker 1: relationship with power. In our culture, power and money are
Speaker 1: very much synonymous, and so if our relationship with power
Speaker 1: is ambivalent, our relationship with money will be ambivalent as well.
Speaker 1: And I now can see that it was pretty foolish
Speaker 1: of me that, to me, the best thing that ever
Speaker 1: happened was direct deposit into my bank account of my
Speaker 1: of my pay. I was doing the work I wanted
Speaker 1: to do. I didn't want to think about it otherwise, Well,
Speaker 1: that was not very smart. That was not very smart.
Speaker 1: And I think that financial literacy for young women is
Speaker 1: just incredibly important and understanding the importance of not just
Speaker 1: what's in your paycheck, but how you build your wealth,
Speaker 1: how you build your how you build your your wealth,
Speaker 1: for your for your future and the future of your family,
Speaker 1: and that was just not even something that I It
Speaker 1: was not even a concept for me until recent years
Speaker 1: and now in in in the work that I do
Speaker 1: with Take the Lead, we definitely talk about the relationship
Speaker 1: between money and power and that it's that money and
Speaker 1: power are both like hammers. You can build something with
Speaker 1: it or you can break something apart. They have no
Speaker 1: characteristics of their own, so it's what you do with it.
Speaker 1: If what you do with it is something good, well,
Speaker 1: then why shouldn't you have the financial capability? So that's
Speaker 1: that's my personal rethinking about money and power and how
Speaker 1: you deal with them and how you help women have
Speaker 1: a better relationship with money. Another thing that changes every
Speaker 1: time is our relationship with friends. And oftentimes when we're
Speaker 1: you know, younger, raising kids, it's hard to make time
Speaker 1: for for friends who are your friends now and what
Speaker 1: do you what do you do with them? Well, one
Speaker 1: of the things that somebody told me when I left
Speaker 1: Planned Parenthood was that your rolodex is going to change quickly,
Speaker 1: and the people who will answer your phone calls will
Speaker 1: change quickly, and that is definitely true. You find out
Speaker 1: who your friends are who your real friends are. But
Speaker 1: but that so, so my friends now tend to be
Speaker 1: fairly diverse, fairly much more diverse than they were earlier
Speaker 1: in my life. And that's a deliberate thing. And whenever
Speaker 1: I start noticing that all of my friends are my age,
Speaker 1: I start trying to make sure that I have friends
Speaker 1: who are in younger generations A so I know what's
Speaker 1: going on in the world and be so I will
Speaker 1: always have some friends. It's a real thing, you know.
Speaker 1: It probably has something to think about. I'm very blessed
Speaker 1: to have a few women friends who started zooming at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the pandemic and it was just one
Speaker 1: of those oh why don't we do this on Sunday
Speaker 1: and and it became a regular weekly thing. And I've
Speaker 1: come to so appreciate that community of women who care
Speaker 1: about each other. So you just touched upon aging. It's
Speaker 1: hard to believe you are seventy nine years old. What
Speaker 1: is your relationship like with aging and beauty and how
Speaker 1: has that changed. I can't believe I'm going to be
Speaker 1: eighty years old either. I'm fortunate to have good health.
Speaker 1: But I'm fortunate to have good health, I think because
Speaker 1: I do take care of my health. And being in
Speaker 1: very stressful jobs, I learned the importance of exercise. And
Speaker 1: and also I will tell you when I left planned parenthood,
Speaker 1: people started asking me if I had a facelift. No,
Speaker 1: I didn't have a facelift. But I'm getting Actually, I'm
Speaker 1: getting sleep every night, which is I didn't for nine years,
Speaker 1: especially as the national President. I ran on four or
Speaker 1: five hours of sleep every night. And you cannot do
Speaker 1: that and stay healthy. So exercise is is really my
Speaker 1: secret sauce. It makes me feel, it releases those happy hormones,
Speaker 1: and I get really cranky when I don't get to exercise.
Speaker 1: So I would say exercises my secret sauce. A little
Speaker 1: green tea is my secret sauce. And not letting things
Speaker 1: get you down. You know, as you get older, you
Speaker 1: learn you can do these things and survive. You just
Speaker 1: learn that. And the more you learn that, you let
Speaker 1: other things roll off your back. It's not as important anymore.
Speaker 1: So you have fifteen grandchildren and six children? Is that
Speaker 1: number correct? Right now? That number is correct, But I
Speaker 1: do need to I do need to say that three
Speaker 1: of them are my bio logical children, and three of
Speaker 1: them are my current husbands of biological children. And then
Speaker 1: between the two of us we have those fifteen grandchildren,
Speaker 1: of whom a few are great grandchildren. For those that
Speaker 1: are girls and even the boys, how are they being
Speaker 1: raised differently even than you raised your children. The youngest
Speaker 1: of the great grandchildren is six years old. And when
Speaker 1: I see her now, I will tell you that from
Speaker 1: her birth she has been given all kinds of girly
Speaker 1: girly things, clothes really clothes, and they let her do
Speaker 1: makeup and stuff that I'm going, why do you do that?
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, she is an athlete. She
Speaker 1: is you know, she is in her physical body, which
Speaker 1: I think this is a new generation of girls who
Speaker 1: know how to take up space. You know, they know
Speaker 1: the strength of their bodies. That is not something that
Speaker 1: I knew. And I am so glad to see that.
Speaker 1: And I'm so glad to see that her family gives
Speaker 1: her that they give her lots of opportunities to to
Speaker 1: to be in in different kinds of sports and gymnastics
Speaker 1: and things that she enjoys and that give her that
Speaker 1: feeling of physical strength. I think that's fantastic, Gloria. What
Speaker 1: do the next ten years of your career look like
Speaker 1: the next ten years of my career look like this.
Speaker 1: First of all, I am planning this year to raise
Speaker 1: a lot of money to make Take the Lead a
Speaker 1: self I mean, a sustainable organization. You see. The problem
Speaker 1: for me is I know how to do almost everything
Speaker 1: in an organization since I started with a small one
Speaker 1: and grew it to a big one in La la
Speaker 1: la la la, And I now you know, I just
Speaker 1: I can just do too many things, and I'm doing
Speaker 1: too many things, so I need to So my my
Speaker 1: plan here is to to raise enough money to to
Speaker 1: build a sustainable infrastructure be able to have a succession plan.
Speaker 1: I want someone else to run the organization, believe it
Speaker 1: or not, even despite the fact I've been a CEO
Speaker 1: for pretty much all of my career life. I love
Speaker 1: the mission, I love the I don't mind fundraising, I
Speaker 1: love doing the public facing work. I I love the
Speaker 1: relationship building and all that. But daily operational stuff, no way.
Speaker 1: And then, as I am able to ease myself out
Speaker 1: a little bit, because you know, I'll keep I'll keep
Speaker 1: doing what I do because I take the lead is
Speaker 1: really based all on my own intellectual property, and I'm
Speaker 1: donating the use of all of that to take the lead,
Speaker 1: and I will continue to do that, but I want
Speaker 1: to be able to oversee that use of that, you know,
Speaker 1: my books and my courses and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But beyond that, I also have realized that I have
Speaker 1: had the opportunity to be both a maker and an
Speaker 1: observer of really important elements of history, and so I
Speaker 1: haven't saved everything, but I want to organize my papers
Speaker 1: and put them into uh some kind of place where
Speaker 1: they will not just be on a shelf, but will
Speaker 1: be available as working tools and documents for women's leadership
Speaker 1: for perpetuity. So I don't know what that's gonna look
Speaker 1: like exactly, and I'm open to ideas from people for
Speaker 1: exactly how to do that, but I see that as
Speaker 1: being something that I definitely want to do in the
Speaker 1: next five to ten years. So I feel a responsibility
Speaker 1: actually to do that, because when you don't know your history,
Speaker 1: it's hard to create the future of your choice. You know,
Speaker 1: we have these little what we call our jewelry power
Speaker 1: tools that take the lead. And I'm wearing the know
Speaker 1: your History lantern that gives you insights into yourself because
Speaker 1: we are all formed by the history that that made us,
Speaker 1: and so it's important, and I want the next generation
Speaker 1: to know the history and to be able to apply
Speaker 1: it to their own advancement and their own leadership. So
Speaker 1: that's what I see the next ten years as being, well, Gloria,
Speaker 1: we are going to go to our speed round. Now.
Speaker 1: We're just going to ask you a few quick questions
Speaker 1: and you can give us quick answers. Amy, do you
Speaker 1: want to kick us off? Yes? What book are you
Speaker 1: reading now? I'm reading one called My Grandmother's Hands and
Speaker 1: it is about racial trauma. It's an incredible book. It's
Speaker 1: just an incredible book. I'm usually not reading things that
Speaker 1: are that deeply into psychology, but but the author's voice
Speaker 1: is so gorgeous. Also, it's like it's just fabulous. It's
Speaker 1: it's wonderful, wonderful insights. I just finished reading a book
Speaker 1: about that was set in Odessa, Texas, the first novel
Speaker 1: I've read in a long time, called Valentine. It's a
Speaker 1: hard book to read, but it's a hard scrabble life
Speaker 1: in West Texas and it's very true and I got
Speaker 1: a lot the laughs out of remembering some of the places.
Speaker 1: As I was listening to it. You're an expert on leadership.
Speaker 1: Who if you had to name three leadership experts you admire,
Speaker 1: who would they be one of them? I just did
Speaker 1: a I just did one of my LinkedIn lives with
Speaker 1: this morning. Her name is Felicia Davis, and she's one
Speaker 1: of the leadership ambassadors for Take the Lead. She has
Speaker 1: an organization called the Women's Collective, and she does branding,
Speaker 1: self branding for women. And she can take my very
Speaker 1: straightforward ideas and turn them into really cool ways of
Speaker 1: teaching them. And I think teaching is something you are
Speaker 1: doing all the time when you're a leader. Have to
Speaker 1: be able to put things into story form and communicate
Speaker 1: in a way that people can hear you. So that's one. Now,
Speaker 1: this is somebody who is not alive anymore. But Warren
Speaker 1: Benness was one of the people from whom I learned
Speaker 1: the most. And what I learned from him was the
Speaker 1: principle that the first duty of a leader is the
Speaker 1: creation of meaning. And I'll tell you that that really
Speaker 1: that Relea stood me in good stead and one of
Speaker 1: my former mentors also also male. You know, I have
Speaker 1: to understand there weren't that many female mentors for me
Speaker 1: when I was when I was getting into leadership roles.
Speaker 1: I almost find myself channeling him now. But the things
Speaker 1: I learned from him were and then I go back
Speaker 1: and I reread his books all the time. His name
Speaker 1: is Watts Whacker, and he was a futurist, and it
Speaker 1: was like anything is possible. Those are the things that
Speaker 1: have helped me do what I've done. What is your
Speaker 1: nighttime routine? My nighttime routine is I I'm sorry to
Speaker 1: admit this. I usually do an extra couple of hours
Speaker 1: of work first of all, but then I lift weights
Speaker 1: with my husband and that is kind of like our
Speaker 1: little routine before we go to bed. As he's not
Speaker 1: great on exercise, so I'm always trying to encourage him.
Speaker 1: And so we've started lifting weights together at night. And uh,
Speaker 1: that's it. How do you keep your romance alive? Look? Look,
Speaker 1: I think laughing a lot, laughing a lot. We talk
Speaker 1: about that a lot that we do laugh a lot together.
Speaker 1: We don't do any of the things that you're always
Speaker 1: people always talk about. You know, there you don't see
Speaker 1: any candles and you know, like soft music and stuff
Speaker 1: like that around here. But you know what, he's ninety
Speaker 1: one and I'm eighty and we just are still all
Speaker 1: over each other all the time. Lou Burns has been
Speaker 1: listening to our interview and he will be asking you
Speaker 1: the final question from the male perspective, what was your
Speaker 1: role in the Civil Rights Act of in that time period?
Speaker 1: Who did you work with? And also did you get
Speaker 1: any flak from your neighbors and people that was around you,
Speaker 1: because obviously you grew up in a time where segregation
Speaker 1: was still happening. Indeed, all those things right now. I
Speaker 1: was home with three small children during the height of
Speaker 1: the of the of the movement of the sixties, and
Speaker 1: so while my heart would have gone to Selma, you know,
Speaker 1: physically I felt I couldn't do that. So I looked
Speaker 1: for things that were local, and mostly the things that
Speaker 1: I did were getting involved with with groups like there
Speaker 1: was an organization at the time, I don't know if
Speaker 1: it still exists called the Panel of American Women. That
Speaker 1: was the name of it, Panel of American Women, And
Speaker 1: you could call upon them to bring a panel to
Speaker 1: your group where there would be four or five people,
Speaker 1: each one representing a different race or religion. And that
Speaker 1: was the kind of thing that I was able to
Speaker 1: get myself involved with I had no idea, Sam, I
Speaker 1: should have known just by doing math that Gloria was
Speaker 1: about to turn eight. And it got me thinking that,
Speaker 1: you know, we've done a number of these interviews now,
Speaker 1: and we have interviewed many iconic women who are still
Speaker 1: doing so much work in their seventies and eighties, and
Speaker 1: it just it just makes me rethink everything I've ever
Speaker 1: thought about my own career, like in this really inspiring, amazing,
Speaker 1: profound way, like I aspire to be like Gloria Felt
Speaker 1: and Gloria's sinum. Glorious Chinam also is in her eighties
Speaker 1: and she is still not just like kicking, but she's
Speaker 1: making change in the world and she's out there. And
Speaker 1: I really when when we meet these people, I don't
Speaker 1: think there's any difference between us and them. I mean
Speaker 1: in terms of like the whole adage, like ages just
Speaker 1: a number. They embody it, they really do, and they
Speaker 1: don't get discouraged even though they're fighting some of the
Speaker 1: same bullshit fight they've been fighting for fifty years. They
Speaker 1: just keep going. And I love hearing about their friendships.
Speaker 1: It's so important. We always talk about this, Sam, like
Speaker 1: how important friendship is for women, and these are women
Speaker 1: who can still tell stories about going out and having
Speaker 1: fun with their girlfriends, like life is long and there's
Speaker 1: so much to do, and I think it's and it's
Speaker 1: beyond friendship book. I just think they both have fun.
Speaker 1: Like you know, it's the whole thing that you and
Speaker 1: I always talk about how we're some of the few
Speaker 1: people who know will just like hop on a plane
Speaker 1: in a moment's notice and say, yeah, I'll show up
Speaker 1: at that and just make it work, and we are
Speaker 1: our tendency is to say yes over no. I think
Speaker 1: that if you look at the people we've interviewed, and
Speaker 1: there's such a wide variety right of everything from ethnicity
Speaker 1: to background, culture to careers, and one of the things
Speaker 1: that kind of ties them all together is that optimism
Speaker 1: and that zest for just digging into life. One thing
Speaker 1: in Glorious Story that I loved is that she built
Speaker 1: this in amazing career in a very nonlinear way. And
Speaker 1: I also think that's something that we see among these
Speaker 1: really amazing legendary women that we talked to who are
Speaker 1: in their seventies and eighties, is they have lived a
Speaker 1: thousand lives. They have reinvented themselves seventy two times, and
Speaker 1: I hold on to that right after what I've been
Speaker 1: through in the past couple of years, that you can
Speaker 1: reinvent yourself and you can live a new life and
Speaker 1: live to breathe another day, and it's just incredibly inspiring.
Speaker 1: Gloria is still plotting her next course. Like when we
Speaker 1: asked her, what does your career look like in five
Speaker 1: or ten years? Like she had an answer. It was there.
Speaker 1: She knew she's not done. Thanks for listening to What's
Speaker 1: Her Story with Sam and Amy. We would appreciate it
Speaker 1: if you leave her review wherever you get your podcasts,
Speaker 1: and of course, connect with us on social media at
Speaker 1: What's Her Story podcast. What's Her Story with Sam and
Speaker 1: Amy is powered by my company, The Riveter at the
Speaker 1: Riveter dot Co and Sam's company, park Place Payments at
Speaker 1: park place Payments dot com. Thanks to our producer Stacy
Speaker 1: Parra and our male perspective Blue Burns m HM.