About Gloria Feldt

Samantha Ettus got Me to Tell the Story of My Life on ObsessedTV :-)

Gloria Feldt Biography

Leading women's activist and best selling author Gloria Feldt is a powerful keynote speaker and commentator on leadership, politics, women, reproductive and public health, and media. 

Author and Commentator

Gloria can be found on the web at www.GloriaFeldt.com. Her much-quoted Heartfeldt Blog offers a unique take on current events from where the political and personal meet.

Gloria's upcoming book, No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power ~ Tools for Leading an Unlimited Life, will be published by Seal, fall 2010.  Her last book, co-written with actress Kathleen Turner, is the New York Times best seller, Send Yourself Roses: Thoughts on My Life, Love, and Leading Roles. Her two previous books are The War on Choice: The Right-Wing Attack on Women's Rights and How to Fight Back and Behind Every Choice Is a Story. She has contributed chapters to numerous books on women, politics, health, and leadership.

Her commentary has appeared in The New York Times, USA Today, Democracy: a Journal of Ideas, ELLE, Lilith, and MS magazines among many others, and on-line in Alternet, Salon, The Huffington Post, Daily Kos, Women's Media Center, The Daily Beast, WIMNsVoices, Women’s e-News, ilfpost, Majority Post, Women’s Voices for Change, Blogher, WIMNsVoices, and RH Reality Check. Gloria has appeared as both a newsmaker and a commentator on most major national radio and television news and public affairs programs. Find her on twitter @heartfeldt, on Facebook, LinkedIn, and SheWrites.com.

Credit: Maryanne Russell Photography

Keynote Speaker

Gloria is a sought-after speaker for groups seeking inspiration, motivation, information, and practical leadership skills, whether women's organizations, universities, corporate, or professional groups. She speaks from deep knowledge and personal experience on the frontlines of leadership, politics and advocacy, women, reproductive and public health, and media. She's as effective speaking to groups of thousands as in intimate settings. Besides her solo topics, she’s touring campuses with an intergenerational feminist panel of women called “Women, Girls, and Ladies”. See speaking topics, endorsements, and availability here.

Leader

People Magazine called this former teen mom who became the CEO and movement leader of the world's largest reproductive and sexual health care provider and advocacy organization "the voice of experience". Gloria exemplifies courageous leadership, with 30 years on the frontlines of challenge and change. She brought phenomenal growth to the Planned Parenthood affiliates she led in West Texas and Arizona. Then during arguably the movement's most challenging time since Margaret Sanger's uphill battles, she revitalized the national movement, serving as president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

Her colleagues call her a “practical visionary”; Fast Company magazine lauded the inclusive way she led the organization to adopt a bold new Vision for 2025. By the time she left, the organization’s total combined affiliate and national organization annual revenues approached one billion. Her call to "fight forward" scored insurance coverage for contraceptives and accessible emergency contraception. She initiated the Prevention First Act and reintroduction of a new, improved Freedom of Choice Act. She understands politics from the ground up--the 2004 March for Women's Lives which she helped to spearhead brought over 1.2 million men, women, and families to Washington, the largest protest march in American history--and also served as president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, which she grew into the largest nonpartisan pro-choice action fund and Political Action Committee.

Honors and Civic Activities

Among her honors, Vanity Fair magazine named Gloria one of America's "top 200 women legends, leaders, and trailblazers". Glamour magazine honored her as Woman of the Year. She was one of Women's e-News' 2007 "21 Leaders for the 21st Century".  Texas Monthly, naming her to its "Texas Twenty"--she hails originally from Temple TX--described her as "part den mother, part businesswoman, part Mae West". In Arizona, she was named Women of Achievement by Mujer, Junior League, and Soroptomist, and the city of Phoenix awarded her its Martin Luther King Living the Dream Award.

Gloria is a fellow of the International Leadership Forum. She serves on the Women's Media Center board of directors, on the board of the Jewish Women’s Archive, and advisory boards of Our Bodies, Ourselves and of Hygeia PCP. She is a professor of practice at Arizona State University, where she teaches "Women, Power, and Leadership".

Personal and Family

Gloria has a unique understanding of the confluence of the personal and the political in American culture. A confluence of the personal and the political propelled her own story too. As a young wife and mother from small-town Texas, she raised three children while attending college. She taught Head Start and was active in the civil rights movement and interfaith activities. There, she realized women's civil rights, equality, and social justice depend on having the human right to determine their own reproductive destiny.

Her life's passion for social justice, especially for women, became her life's work. That's why today, she's delighted to share her expertise and experiences in her writing, speeches, and media commentary. She has a special passion for encouraging young people through the media to participate in the political process on behalf of their own rights and health.

She and her husband, Alex Barbanell, have a combined family of six children, nine grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. They live in New York and Arizona.

 

Inundated with Grandsons!

Alex and His Friend Maude