Kirk Adams & Cecile Richards
Executive director, President, Healthcare Education Project, Planned Parenthood and Planned Parenthood Action Fund
Caroline Lewis
How they met
They were organizing hotel workers in New Orleans for United Labor Unions when they began working together on Memorial Day in 1982. She was his boss, which, he said, "didn’t stop me from falling for her at first sight."
Why they are a power couple
Originally from Texas, where her mother, Ann, was a legendary governor, Cecile Richards cut her teeth in Washington, D.C., as deputy chief of staff for House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi. Since 2006, she has been president of Planned Parenthood, a New York-based organization she is repeatedly tasked with defending against conservative detractors. At a 2015 congressional hearing, she told House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz to “check your sources” when he presented a bogus chart at her testimony showing a dramatic increase in the organization’s abortion rate.
Kirk Adams established himself as a major player in labor through several leadership positions at the powerful Service Employees International Union. Recently, he helped bring the agenda of New York’s health care industry to the national stage by becoming executive director of the Healthcare Education Project, a lobbying organization run through an unlikely partnership between 1199 SEIU and the Greater New York Hospital Association. Together the organizations represent 350,000 health workers and 250 hospitals in New York.
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