About Shannon
The founder of Moms Demand Action, Shannon Watts was named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People, Glamour’s Woman of the Year and Forbes 50 Over 50.
Watts served as a full-time volunteer leader for Moms Demand Action for 11 years. Under her watch, the organization accumulated over 10 million supporters and established a chapter in every state. Volunteers have stopped the NRA’s priority legislation in statehouses 90 percent of the time every year for the past decade; passed over 500 gun safety laws across the country; changed corporate policies; educated millions of Americans about secure gun storage; and elected thousands of gun sense candidates to office, including hundreds of its own volunteers. In 2022, the grassroots movement helped break through the logjam in Congress and pass the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the first federal gun safety bill in a generation.
Watts is an active board member of Emerge America, one of the nation’s leading organizations for recruiting and training women to run for office. She’s a writer on Substack and her opinion pieces have been published in outlets such as The Washington Post, Elle, Time, The 19th, and more. Her book, Fight Like a Mother: How a Grassroots Movement Took on the Gun Lobby and Why Women Will Change the World, was released in May of 2019.
