Stay Focused, but Nimble

When I arrived at Guttmacher several years ago, the world was on the verge of a four-alarm fire. We were still reeling from COVID, navigating the fallout of a post-Roe landscape, and watching the ground shift beneath us, both at home and abroad.

It was a precarious moment for the country, the organization and our people.

But I didn’t arrive a stranger. I’d crossed paths with Guttmacher’s work and partnered with its staff for my entire career. I’ve spent over two decades fighting for sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and the most marginalized communities. I arrived with a deep belief in Guttmacher’s mission and our value proposition. What I didn’t expect was how much that belief would deepen once I saw, up close, how the work happens.

Given the internal and external landscape, my Co-CEO, Jonathan Wittenberg, and I saw our role first and foremost as providing stability to the organization, navigating change together and communicating as clearly and consistently as possible about what all of the volatility meant for our mission, our staff and the communities most impacted. Our core work, protecting and advancing SRHR, didn’t change. How we focused it did.

That focus sharpened as the chaos worsened. When you’re an organization built on science, evidence, research, policy and narrative change, you can be pulled in countless directions. This is especially heightened when data itself is under attack and mis- and disinformation run rampant. The organization hadn’t had a fulsome, formal strategic plan in years. And Jonathan and I knew that staff would benefit from an answer to a simple question: where do we concentrate effort when there are so many competing priorities—and threats—at once?

As we witnessed the federal government taking down data, scrubbing websites and peddling lies about lifelines like medication abortion, the answers came into focus. Guttmacher provides the research infrastructure for this movement. When that infrastructure is under attack everywhere else, our data and evidence become even more essential. We are the fact-checkers and truth-tellers. We arm advocates and policymakers with the evidence they need to counter the data gap and to defend against misinformation. These are our superpowers, and we need to lean into them more than ever.

If you ask me what else has been lost during this time that is vital to rebuild, my answer is public confidence and belief in facts. That won’t be an easy task. Indeed, it may be the work of a generation. But everything else depends on establishing that facts and evidence still matter.

Facts and evidence still do matter, but so do the people impacted by the erosion of their rights. Behind our Monthly Abortion Provision Study are real people across the country trying to get care under bans that aim to put barrier after barrier in front of them. (I’ve said as much under oath when I testified at the US Senate on post-Dobbs abortion access.) Domestically, Guttmacher can tell this story from a data perspective and almost in real time, drawing on the insights and stories of partner advocates across the country. Globally, we can make the case for investing in contraception, abortion care and reproductive health with numbers that policymakers and public health officials can act on so that people get the care they need. These are parts of the infrastructure Guttmacher has built to bolster an evidence-based resistance.

Through resistance comes hope, and what makes me most hopeful is the powerful value proposition Guttmacher offers to the movement. Guttmacher is a producer of and authority on high-quality scientific evidence, a center of excellence for policy analysis, a shaper of media and public discourse, and a catalyst for evidence-based policy change. No one facet of this proposition stands alone; its power lies in its integration.

When I imagine 2029, when this strategic plan ends, Guttmacher will have disrupted mis- and disinformation in meaningful and measurable ways. Our domestic work will continue to tell a compelling, data-driven story about the state of SRHR. Our global partnerships will not just be robust but equitable, ensuring partners have the tools to lead research and advocacy in their own countries and regions. And internally, we will have organized to do all of it sustainably without ever sacrificing the integrity that people know us for and expect from us. That world is within reach, and this is the team that can build it.

One of the real gifts of my time at Guttmacher has been getting to see how every person in this organization contributes to our mission, in ways small and large. I came in admiring Guttmacher as an institution. I’m leaving in awe of its people.

My wish for the team is to stay focused on the mission but be willing to adapt. Be nimble, bold and responsive to the moment in front of you, without ever losing sight of what makes Guttmacher unique.

As this chapter comes to a close, I hope my story at Guttmacher shows that we met an unprecedented moment with clarity and resolve. I hope it shows that we created a shared vision that gives this team both a clear road map and the freedom to pivot when the ground shifts again, because it will. I can’t wait to witness the journey and will be cheering you on from afar.

With gratitude,
Destiny Lopez