Profile

For more than 90 years, Planned Parenthood has been the nation’s leading reproductive health care provider, educator, and advocate. We have a presence in all 50 states and we operate more than 800 health centers across the country. Planned Parenthood delivers vital health care services, sex education and sexual health information to millions of women, men and young people every year.

The majority of our services are preventative care. About 97% of Planned Parenthood’s health services are focused on preventative care to keep women, men and teens healthy and to help women and couples plan their families. We provide cancer screenings, breast exams, contraception, sexual transmitted infection prevention and treatment, and comprehensive sex education.

We are very committed to making sure that our health services are available to all women. We work with all of our patients to make sure that we don’t turn anyone away and that they get the health care services that they need.

I oversee all of the external affairs departments: development, communications and marketing, community education and public policy. My job varies day by day: whether it is working with our public policy department trying to get legislation passed at the state capital; or working with our community education department to provide comprehensive sexual health education for teen across the state; or working with our development and fundraising department to ensure that we have the necessary money to be able to run our health centers to provide all of our advocacy and education programs; to finally our communications and marketing program to let people know that we are out there and the services that we provide and what we do for women, families and teens throughout the state of Illinois.

I’m quite spoiled. I have a beautiful office that overlooks Millennium Park in downtown Chicago.

We have about 50 people who work in our administrative offices and about 200 people who work in our health centers across the state. I am really fortunate that everyone on our staff is fabulous to work with. People range in age from recent college graduates to people nearing the end of their professional careers. We have a very diverse work environment in terms of ethnicity, race, and age— but not gender. We have a lot of women. It is a fantastic, diverse workplace but I think the most important thing is that we are all so committed to what we do—making sure that women, families and teens get the necessary reproductive health care services that they need.

I need to be a generalist because the work that I do runs the gamut. Being a good manager and good leader can carry you through many realms of the workforce.

I try to get to the office at 8:00 and try to rap up about 6:00. My day is chalk full of meetings and juggling a whole bunch of different things. No day is ever similar to the last.

I travel a bit for work. We have 19 health clinics across the state. I visit the different clinics. Our national headquarters are in New York and Washington and so I do travel to both of those cities a couple times a year.

I love the fact that the work that I do is really, truly making a difference for women throughout the state of Illinois. I know that because I am working at Planned Parenthood, I feel good about what I do. I know that more women, teens and men have access to the critical reproductive health care services that they need and that they stay healthy. And that makes me feel fantastic every day that I get up to go to work to know that I am making a difference.

I love everything about my job.

The overall big picture knowing that the services that Planned Parenthood provides are so critical to so many people. Knowing the sheer volume of patients that come through our doors everyday needing our services really inspires me.

Growing up in DC and being influenced by politics, I’ve been inspired by so many leaders who have been committed to the cause who have really inspired me to work for what I believe in and make sure that every day I am fighting to make my own little niche in the world a better place.

My mom. She was the one who got me involved in politics. She was the one who got me to become a feminist at a very early age. I remember reading Ms. Magazine. I remember stuffing envelopes for political candidates and waiting for the election returns. I have to credit her for giving me my progressive politics that are in my blood.

It is going to sound counter-intuitive, but right after college I had an internship that led to my first job at a really fabulous public relations firm in Washington DC that was committed to progressive causes. I was surrounded by very successful and very young women who had already made significant careers for themselves. I looked up at them as role models and they served as mentors for me, which was so important.

I was struggling about what to do from there. Should I go to graduate school? Should I go to law school? Across the board, these women told me that work experience was more important for what I personally wanted to do than going back to school. It was some of the best advice I ever received because the on the job experience gave me a leg up while people were in grad school, I got extra experience that helped me excel in front of them.

I didn’t necessarily get any bad advice but I took some bad jobs, which I think a lot of people do. You have to take a lot to sometimes find your right path but you can usually correct those. Having a good work environment, being surrounded by people who are supportive and encouraging is so critically important. And a bad work environment is one of the worst places you can be even if you really love the work itself that you are doing.

Pursue your passion. Figure out what it is that you love and go for it. And at the same time, it’s OK not to know. I took a lot of jobs to figure out what I didn’t want to do and that was just as important as figuring out what I did want to do. It’s OK to make mistakes. Ultimately, if you do what you love it’s not work.

Not take a couple of the bad jobs that I did. You’ve got to listen to your gut. If something is telling you that something is not right, it probably isn’t right.

The work that I do. I am passionate about progressive democratic politics. I also used to work for a labor union and I am passionate about worker’s rights and the right to organize.

Outside of work, I am just married a little over a year, so I am passionate about my husband and building a family. (Beth is expecting her first baby.)

I love to cook. I love to read. I love to run. Having interests outside of work is critically important.

I grew up outside of Washington, DC, so I like to think that politics is in my blood. After I graduated from college in political science and English, I moved back and worked in politics doing a lot of public policy work but also working for public relations and public affairs firms. My background is in public policy and communications.

I moved to Chicago about nine years ago and I was working for a public affairs firm and one of my first and beloved clients was Planned Parenthood. I got to know this organization.

But my involvement with Planned Parenthood goes way back to when I was a teen. Planned Parenthood made a huge difference in my life when I was a teenager and provided me with the health care services that I needed.

So I have always had an affinity for this organization. I have always been passionate about reproductive health care. I was lucky enough to have Planned Parenthood for a client for a very long time and when it consolidated its organization in Illinois, the CEO recognized the need for a Senior Vice President of External Affairs. He approached me about this position. I was at the right place at the right time.