Leading through crisis: lessons from Planned Parenthood's Alexis McGill Johnson

Executive overview

When the legal foundation of your organization is under threat, strategy can't wait for certainty. Alexis McGill Johnson took the helm of Planned Parenthood in 2019 and immediately faced internal demoralization, COVID-19, and the looming overturn of Roe v. Wade.

Her response: stop leading like a "weighted blanket" and start driving transformation before permission is granted. The framework is relentless, values-led leadership that makes room for grief and rage while keeping the team focused on what comes after the crisis.

The leader's job is to model fearlessness so the team can be fearless — even when the outcome is already bad.

The long game of rights and opposition

• The overturn of Roe didn't happen overnight — the opposition built toward it over a decade by remaking the judiciary.
• Planned Parenthood had relied on courts as a backstop; that strategy became untenable as the judiciary shifted.
• 600 abortion restrictions were introduced across 47 states in a single year — not just in the South and Midwest.
• The lesson: winning a right is not the same as defending and maintaining it — both require sustained, long-horizon effort.
• Voting restrictions and abortion restrictions are concentrated in the same states — a deliberate consolidation of political power.

Rebuilding a demoralized organization

• Staff morale was badly damaged before Johnson even started — a tumultuous leadership transition had left the team adrift.
• Initial instinct was to "become a weighted blanket" and stabilize; colleagues pushed her to stop waiting for permission to lead.
• The national office had to reset its relationship with 49 semi-autonomous affiliates: lead by influence, not control.
• "Resizing" meant stepping back from directing every conversation — confidence without always needing to drive.
• Centering equity was a strategic bet, not just a moral stance: resourcing leaders of color and letting the most-impacted lead.

Confronting the founder's legacy

• Margaret Sanger's connection to eugenicists had never left Planned Parenthood's history uncontested.
• Rather than simply labeling Sanger racist, Johnson chose to interrogate how those behaviors persisted inside the organization and movement.
• The New York Times op-ed calling Planned Parenthood a "Karen" was a signal to staff, allies, and critics: equity work would be real, not rhetorical.
• Goal: de-center whiteness, grow inclusivity, and demonstrate the kind of leader she intended to be — one who speaks in truth.
• Internal accountability required naming that potential Karens could exist inside the movement itself.

Holding grief and strategy at the same time

• Johnson holds two things simultaneously: preparing to preside over some version of the end of Roe, and building for the 30 years after.
• She draws on Alice Walker — "Hope is a woman who has lost her fear" — as a daily practice, not a slogan.
• The Sisyphus frame: imagine him happy. The team must process grief while remaining mission-focused on the day after.
• Morale leadership means creating a container for people to feel devastated, while also showing what comes next.
• The question after Roe is no longer about defending a floor — it becomes a fundamental conversation about equality and freedom.

The role of corporate citizens

• Businesses must center engagement on their staff and the people they serve — not poll-test their way to positions.
• Frontline workers in Texas are driving 18 hours to Colorado for abortion access, sometimes taking children because they have no childcare — this is the reality employers are ignoring.
• Corporate citizenship means taking democracy and reproductive rights seriously as obligations, not optional stances.
• Telehealth prescriptions for medication abortion — approved provisionally by the FDA during COVID — represent a genuine structural gain.
• The race reckoning of 2020 opened language and practice around centering equity that Planned Parenthood is now embedding structurally.

Shifting bias in large organizations

• At the Perception Institute, Johnson ran bias interventions at large corporations — not to make people feel bad, but to help them hear colleagues' experiences differently.
• Scenario planning was the primary tool: playing out in real time what systemic bias looks like for actual people.
• That empathy shift requires buy-in at every level — boards, executives, managers, frontline workers, shareholders.
• Shared language is essential: people need a common framework before they can act consistently on equity.