Gloria Feldt is a women's rights activist and the leading author, speaker, and media commentator on reproductive rights and health from that point where the personal meets the political. A teen mom who rose to be the leader of the world's largest reproductive health provider and advocacy organization, she was dubbed "the voice of experience" by People Magazine.

Her 30-year career with Planned Parenthood, was an "extraordinary opportunity to make my life's passion my life's work". She served Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) as its national president and CEO from 1996-2005. She is currently at work on a book about America's difficult relationship with sex.

Gloria is the author of two books. The critically acclaimed The War on Choice: The Right-Wing Attack on Women's Rights and How to Fight Back (Bantam) documents the right-wing strategy to eliminate freedoms women have taken for granted for decades. It outlines a plan of action for "fighting forward" to reverse this dangerous course.

Her first book, Behind Every Choice Is a Story, tells the personal stories of 21st century women’s varied choices about sex, relationships and childbearing. Behind Every Choice was recommended for secondary school libraries by the American Library Association's Amelia Bloomer Project.

A confluence of the personal and the political propelled Gloria's own story. As a young wife and mother from small-town Texas, she raised three children while attending college. She taught in the Head Start program and was active in the civil rights movement and many interfaith activities. Realizing that women's civil rights depend on having the human right to determine their own reproductive destiny, Gloria joined Planned Parenthood in 1974 as affiliate chief executive, first in West Texas and later in Arizona, before becoming the president of PPFA.

Gloria led PPFA to adopt its groundbreaking Vision for 2025 and to set a bold agenda to advance reproductive rights and increase access to reproductive health care in the U.S. and around the globe. Fast Company magazine took note and called her visionary leadership skills "shrewd and effective".

She greatly increased services to local affiliates, which provide services to 5 million individuals annually through their network of almost 900 health centers. Her call to "fight forward" has been the driving force behind contraceptive equity legislation that has passed in 22 states and been the subject of successful legal action. She led the fight for accessible emergency contraception (EC), medically accurate sex education, and safe, legal abortion. Her leadership helped bring over a million people to Washington D. C. to March for Women's Lives--the largest march of any kind in the nation's history. The Prevention First Act of 2005 owes its inception to Gloria’s determination to make sure women get the healthcare they need. She expanded PPFA's international programs, launching Global Partners advocacy and traveling globally in support of direct service programs. She served on the U.S. delegation to the U.N.'s Cairo plus Five evaluation meeting in The Hague in 1999.

Never one to avoid the political hot seat on behalf of her convictions, she also served as president of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the organization's political arm, which grew under her leadership to be the largest nonpartisan pro-choice action fund and Political Action Committee.

In recognition of her achievements, she was given the PPFA's highest honor: the Margaret Sanger Award, in April, 2005.

Vanity Fair magazine dubbed her one of America's "top 200 women legends, leaders, and trailblazers". Glamour named her Woman of the Year. Texas Monthly, naming her to its Texas Twenty, described her as "part den mother, part businesswoman, part Mae West".

Now happily speaking in her own voice about the larger range of women's issues, Gloria is a sought-after public speaker, lecturing at universities, civic and professional organizations, churches and synagogues, and national and international conferences, to audiences as large as 1,000,000 and as diverse as the Aspen Institute, the National Asian Women's Health Organization, the 92nd Street Y, the National Press Club, Hadassah's national convention, and the Democratic National Convention. Her commentary has appeared in The New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, among other publications, as well as on-line sources such as TomPaine.org, Alternet, Salon, and various blogs and chats. Gloria, a newsmaker as well as a commentator, has been featured on most major radio and television networks and has appeared on top-ranked public affairs programs, including NPR's "Morning Edition" and "Fresh Air", the Today show, Good Morning America, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, The O'Reilly Factor, Hardball with Chris Matthews, and Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Several of her speeches have been aired on C-Span and public radio and have been published in Vital Speeches of the Day.

She and her husband, Alex Barbanell, have a combined family of six children, nine grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. They live in New York and Arizona.