In the face of significant setbacks and losses in the 2024 national election, women and gender-expansive leaders still have reason to celebrate important individual wins and historic gains across the country. Vote Run Lead, the largest and most diverse nonprofit dedicated to training women to run for office, is proudly marking its 10-year anniversary with an undaunted vision for what’s to come.

Vote Run Lead is celebrating its alumni and milestones and launching a campaign to raise $1 million in new donations and pledges to continue the hard work of achieving equal representation and a women’s majority.

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Erin Vilardi, CEO and Founder of Vote Run Lead Action is quoted alongside Anita Hill, María Teresa Kumar, Jasmine Crockett, Gloria Steinem, Gretchen Whitmer, Nancy Pelosi, Carol Jenkins, Glynda Carr, Erin Vilardi, Reshma Saujani, Ted Bunch and Kimberly Peeler-Allen: “I think the country and the world really know the untapped political power of women, the untapped political potential of asking women to run for public office, to serve on advisory boards, to get appointments. We literally make government better.”

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In this Vanity Fair profile of philanthropist Melinda French Gates and her company, Pivotal Ventures, several Vote Run Lead alumni and partners are named alongside our mission:

Pivotal has partnered with Vote Run Lead, the political candidate–training program that has worked with 55,000 women, of whom nearly 60 percent have been women of color and 20 percent from rural America. In 2023 elections, winning alums included Nadia Mohamed of St. Louis Park, Minnesota, who became America’s first Somali American mayor, and Shahana Hanif, New York City’s first Muslim woman elected to the city council.

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In this roundup article for Ms. Magazine, RepresentWomen Founder and Executive Director Cynthia Richie Terrell describes the vibes on the ground in Chicago around the DNC, including our nonpartisan joint networking event.

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Watch this video interview/profile from the international Skoll Foundation in which Founder and CEO Erin Vilardi discusses how VRL is shifting state legislatures to represent American women equitably.

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Appearing on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Melinda French Gates, opened up about her commitment to giving away her fortune through Pivotal Ventures, her nonprofit organization that works on projects to empower women.

“What I am doing now in full force is making sure that women’s rights are not only on the agenda, but that women are setting the agenda,” French Gates said about the company.

“One of the things I’m doing is making sure that we have far more women running for office, being able to raise funds for their positions and that they are really well trained on the legislative agenda they want to help get passed,” French Gates said. “There’s 7,000 seats at the state house level and getting women into those positions, they create great policy and it’s a great training ground then to go onto the hill in DC.”

Work like that, French Gates noted, was being done by phenomenal organizations like Vote Run Lead and Vote Mama. “But to do it at scale, it needs to be supercharged,” she said. “Part of why our women’s rights got rolled back in the United States is those organizations were starved for funding and they were playing defense. And I’ve decided to put a billion dollars to it in the next two years because I want us to play on the offense.”

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At the 2024 Minnesota Women’s Press April event, leaders from the Changemakers Alliance series — including “Diversity in Politics” underwriters Nevada Littlewolf of Women Winning, and Beth Peterson of Vote Run Lead — discussed the state of women’s representation in Minnesota politics, and the impact it is having.

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Vote Run Lead, the nonprofit on a mission to create a truly reflective democracy with women holding at least 51% of U.S. legislative seats, is excited to announce the appointment of new members to its board of directors: Jillian Hanlon and Lulete Mola. These appointments play a crucial role in advancing Vote Run Lead’s mission to train more women to run for office and win — increasing female representation in government, specifically in targeted state legislatures.

“I’m thrilled to have Lulete Mola and Jillian Hanlon join our Vote Run Lead board of directors,” said Board Chair Munawar Ahmed. “Vote Run Lead has quietly accomplished so much these past 10 years. I am ready for this organization to become a household name. Expanding the board with these two new excellent leaders will help achieve that.”

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In the 2024 Communicator Awards, Vote Run Lead’s 2022 End of Year report received the competition’s highest honor, the Award of Excellence, in the category of “Content & Marketing: Diversity, Equity & Inclusion,” plus Awards of Distinction in the categories of “Social Responsibility for Social Media” and “Causes & Awareness for Social Media.”

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Anticipating and managing hateful threats and harassment, even violence, has become a fact of life for political women. As VRL Founder and CEO Erin Vilardi points out, this concern “permeates women in politics — not just for the folks who are stepping up to lead but for the ecosystem of women around them.”

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