The Real Cecile

As a leader of a new politically charged supergroup, women’s rights champion CECILE RICHARDS is more energized than ever.

- Shalayne Pulia

When Cecile Richards walks, or rather speed walks, into a room, people take notice. How could they not? With her signature cropped ice-white do, traffic-stopping dress, and breakneck pace, she knows how to command attention. Plus, the Texas-born former head of Planned Parenthood (she left last spring) recognizes that when it comes to protecting women’s rights, there is little time to waste. Now the 61-year-old is channeling her passion into a new political action group called Supermajority. Launched in April with Ai-Jen Poo of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and Alicia Garza of Black Lives Matter, the nonprofit aims to teach two million women of all races and socioeconomic backgrounds how to become activists ahead of the presidential election in 2020—patriarchy is damned.

“We’re in a moment in the U.S. when all the rights women have been begrudgingly granted or have earned over the years are slowly being stripped away,” says Richards. “But it feels like there’s a convergence of energy, excitement, and the desire to do more than resist—and we’d better take advantage of that.” With over 50,000 people signing up to join Supermajoritywithin the first 24 hours of its début and the number nearly doubling since then, the group is quickly becoming a formidable force before it’s even made its first major initiative.