Cecile Richards

Cecile Richards (born July 15, 1957) is an American activist and has been the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America since 2006. She is a member of the Democratic Party. In 2010, Richards was elected to the Ford Foundation board of trustees.

Political involvement

Richards previously founded and served as president of America Votes, a coalition of national Democratic Party-affiliated organizations. Before that, she was deputy chief of staff to the U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Leader in the U.S. House of Representatives. She has also worked at the Turner Foundation. In 1996, she founded the Texas Freedom Network, a Texas organization formed to counter the Christian right.

Writing

She contributed the piece "Combating the Religious Right" to the 2003 anthology Sisterhood Is Forever: The Women's Anthology for a New Millennium, edited by Robin Morgan.

Personal life

Richards is the daughter of former Texas governor Ann Richards (née Dorothy Ann Willis) and David Richards. She attended St. Stephen's Episcopal School for high school, and graduated with a bachelor's degree in history from Brown University in 1980. She is married to Kirk Adams, a labor organizer with the Service Employees International Union, and has three children. She lives in New York City.