How Shannon Watts Went From a Stay-at-Home Mom to Founding Moms Demand Action

Shannon Watts was a stay-at-home mom when a national tragedy compelled her to launch Moms Demand Action

Source: Moms Demand Action

Why Did Shannon Watts Found Moms Demand Action?

In 2007, Shannon Watts paused her corporate career in communications to lean into family life. “I spent five years driving to all the sporting events, making meals, doing laundry, and really just focusing on my kids,” Shannon says. But in December 2012 everything changed.

That’s when news of the Sandy Hook shooting broke. Devastated, Shannon turned to Facebook, where she made the first meager steps that would eventually launch Moms Demand Action—now the largest grassroots organization fighting to prevent gun violence in America. Since its beginnings in 2012, Moms Demand Action has faced off against the gun lobby, claiming slow and steady victory for common sense gun reform across the country.

Recently, Mother Untitled had the honor of hosting Shannon on our newest Instagram Live series, Pep Talks With Neha. In our conversation, Shannon shared her journey from an at-home mom in Indiana to the leader of one of the most influential organizations in the country. Shannon’s story is testament to the power of a career pause and its ability to unlock opportunity, and usher moms into their next meaningful chapter.

The excerpt below is edited for clarity. We invite you to listen in on the conversation in its entirety on Mother Untitled’s Instagram.

Taking the First Steps: How Moms Demand Action Started

I came to the table with skills in communications. I’d been in corporate communications. I knew how to build a brand. I knew how to tell stories. I knew how to message. I had been a media trainer, although I had never appeared on television myself. So I had all of it inside me. And it was real.

I want to be clear, I did not know a single one of the women I started this organization with. I met them all online. We just trusted each other. I write about in my book that I think that women have a gating factor that men don't, which is a fear of failure. I think we often feel we have to have all our T's crossed, all our I's dotted before we can jump into something. And so we have these amazing, brilliant ideas, but we never act on them. If I had waited to know everything there was to know about gun violence prevention, or organizing the legislative process policy, I never would have started Moms Demand Action,because I was drinking from a firehose for years. But I just felt in my gut that the time was now for this idea, for this movement and also that the worst thing that could happen was that I would fail, that we would fail. And that was OK. That has to be OK.

I’d been in corporate communications. I knew how to build a brand. I knew how to tell stories. I knew how to message. I had been a media trainer… So I had all of it inside me.

Knowing When to Prioritize Your Work

What I realized quickly was that Congress is not where this work begins. It's where it ends, and you really do have to show up at every school board meeting and city council meeting, and create relationships with your lawmakers, and sit in your statehouse for hours at committee hearings. It is a marathon not a sprint. It is also a relay race. You don't own all the work. You have to hand the baton over when you need to prioritize yourself and your family—and I've done that many times in the last 10 years.

It is incrementalism that I have seen lead to revolutions. We just passed the first federal gun safety legislation in a generation over the summer. And that is because [we show] up all the time. It's collective action, sort of like drips on a rock.

You have to hand the baton over when you need to prioritize yourself and your family—and I've done that many times in the last 10 years.

If you look at other movements, and you compare gun violence prevention to those movements, we're just at the beginning of the spike a decade in. Mothers Against Drunk Driving still exists because they have to protect the wins that they have. And that's what this is about. It really is about knowing that you own a piece of it. Find a piece of it that you're passionate about, commit to working on it with whatever time that you have, and know that it is going to take a while.

Learning to Shift Priorities Between Family and Work

I write about this in my book, the fact that I have a kid who has a pretty significant eating disorder that started I would say six years ago when they were a sophomore in college. It was very serious several times. There were times I would be driving to the airport to go to Moms Demand Action events, and I would turn right around and go home because my kid needed me. And I think that's another thing that's specific to women, which is this idea that you feel guilty about giving other people your work. Or you worry that if someone takes your work, it will take your identity.

It was a real learning lesson to me, which was that people will take the work you're doing when you need to pass the baton and they will bring new energy and new ideas to it, and the work will still be there when you get back. You will feel freed from those responsibilities while you're doing whatever it is you need to do. You are no good to someone else if you are burned out.

People will take the work you're doing when you need to pass the baton and they will bring new energy and new ideas to it, and the work will still be there when you get back.

I see this more with women than men, which is this idea of like I'm just gonna take on all the things I'm gonna do all the things I'm gonna do really well and I'm gonna do them until I collapse. That is not a paradigm for living in a happy and healthy way. So being able to step back from the work and hand it over to other people, and take it back when I could—this really taught me a lot about self-care and about prioritizing myself. But it also taught me about the nature of this work, which is that it will be here, and you can step back and step back in.

Knowing When It’s Time to Close a Chapter

I have asked myself every year for the last 10 years, “Is it time for me to step back?” I remember one woman said to me early on, “Don't get founder’s syndrome.” Basically [founder’s syndrome] is this idea that you become so entwined with the identity of something you've created, that even if it's not good for the organization's future, you hold on to that power. I thought it was really important to ask myself that question every single year, so that I made sure that I was thinking about it in a way that distanced myself, my identity from what we were doing. I don't think a founder’s role is infinite. If there's a finite amount of time, I helped create the space and invited people in, but it's really the people in the space that make it what it is.

I have asked myself every year for the last 10 years, ‘Is it time for me to step back?’

I asked myself that question again after we passed the bipartisan Safer Communities Act this summer. And the answer that came back was yes. This was a bookend… I just think there's there's so much to be said about me stepping back and becoming just a California Moms Demand Action volunteer so that other people can step forward. I have no doubt this movement, this organization will last into perpetuity. And that what we've created is unstoppable. And that I opened a door, but eventually, everyone will go through and everyone will be on the right side of this issue.

I'm not going to pretend that that there's no suffering that goes along with such a monumental decision like that. Because this has been so much of who I am for the last decade, but I'm also really excited to see what's next.

To get involved with Moms Demand Action, and join the fight to end gun violence, text ‘ready’ to 64433, or visit Moms Demand online.

Read More:

Why Volunteering May Be the Best Thing You Do During Your Career Break

Feature image courtesy of Moms Demand Action, Chris Langford Photography.