She just got started
How Shannon Watts Turned Grief into a National Movement—and Wrote the Playbook for the Rest of Us
Shannon Watts has friends everywhere. She’s just that kind of person. Meet her once, and you want to help her. You want to be on her team. You want to make a phone call on her behalf….which is why I got so many phone calls from people earlier this spring.
As one friend said to me: “I’m not working with her but I want to help.” That friend was asking me to host Shannon in our studios because, she said, “Shannon is brave and fearless.”
🎧 Check us out on LinkedIn, YouTube, Apple Podcasts or Spotify 🎧
This is what it means to be brave and fearless….
Shannon’s big career pivot took form on a December morning in 2012. In the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, Shannon found herself weeping in front of the television. She stood frozen, watching in horror as details poured in. Twenty first-graders. Six educators. All gone.
Shannon had five kids of her own. She knew what it was to drop them off at school with the unspoken faith that they would come home. And now, she couldn’t stop thinking: What if they didn’t?
And just as I did on that December morning, she wondered when we’d get to a point as a nation where we’d say, simply, enough is enough. But unlike me, Shannon did one small thing. She opened her laptop and created a Facebook group. It was the right tool at the right time, and by the next morning she had become overwhelmed with inbound communication from angry moms. That was the start of Moms Demand Action, now part of Everytown for Gun Safety. It’s the largest gun violence prevention organization in the U.S.
Today, Moms Demand Action has millions of supporters. Shannon has helped pass life-saving legislation, changed corporate gun policies, and built a network of women who keep showing up. About a year ago, after more than a decade of organizing, Shannon passed the torch to new leadership. Now, she hopes to inspire others to harness their rage and transform it into action. She’s got a new book out and it’s called: Fired Up: How I Built a Movement, and How You Can, Too.
Fired Up isn’t a memoir, though you will get glimpses of Shannon’s own journey from suburban mom and corporate PR exec to full-time activist on the national stage. It’s better to think of this book as a field guide for changemakers. It's a rallying cry for any of us who have ever looked around and thought, “Someone should fix this,” and then quietly wondered if maybe that someone is you.
In this week’s episode of Hello Monday, I talk with Shannon about how she made the leap from personal crisis to public action. We get into what burnout taught her about purpose, how community became her fuel, and why she believes you are more powerful than you think.
