Gloria Feldt and Carole Joffee

Gloria Feldt is an activist, author, and leading expert in women's rights, health, sex, media, leadership, and politics from where the personal meets the political. She blogs about these topics at www.GloriaFeldt.com/heartfeldt-politics-blog.

People Magazine called this former teen mom who became the leader of the world's largest reproductive and sexual health care provider and advocacy organization (Planned Parenthood) "the voice of experience".

Gloria's newest book, co-written with actress Kathleen Turner, is the New York Times bestseller 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.

Her commentary has appeared in The New York Times, USA Today, ELLE, and MS magazines among many others, and on-line in Alternet, Salon, The Huffington Post, Daily Kos, WIMNsVoices, Women’s e-News, 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, and is a SheSource expert. 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".

Gloria exemplifies leadership on the frontlines. For 22 years, she led Planned Parenthood affiliates in West Texas and Arizona. She then served as president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the its political arm, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund from 1996-2005. Her call to "fight forward" scored insurance coverage for contraceptives and accessible emergency contraception, as well as initiating the Prevention First Act and reintroduction of the Freedom of Choice Act. Her leadership helped bring over a million people to Washington D. C. in 2004 to the March for Women's Lives--the largest march of any kind in the nation's history.

Gloria is a fellow of the International Leadership Forum. She serves on the Women's Media Center board of directors, the Jewish Women's Archive board, and the advisory board of Our Bodies, Ourselves.

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. Texas Monthly, naming her to its Texas Twenty, described her as "part den mother, part businesswoman, part Mae West".

That's why today, she shares 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.

Contact: Gloria@gloriafeldt.com website: www.gloriafeldt.com

Blog: www.gloriafeldt.com

Photo credit: Maryanne Russell Photography

Carole Joffe Is a Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Davis href="mailto:cejoffe@ucdavis.edu">cejoffe@ucdavis.edu