We were lucky to catch up with Dawn Huckelbridge recently and have shared our conversation below.

Dawn , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Do you think your parents have had a meaningful impact on you and your journey?

I appreciate many things my parents did, but one thing in particular is how they valued diversity and exposure. I appreciate already that they came from such different backgrounds and fell in love. My dad grew up on a family farm and was on a tractor every day since the age of 5. My mother had Arab family roots, she grew up all over the world, and finished high school on the Philly Main Line. I grew up going to family reunions on one side where we’d eat fried catfish and on the other where we’d eat raw kibbeh nayyeh and Middle Eastern food. But my mother did a lot of things that ensured I got to know people from all walks of life, and could relate to and feel comfortable with all of them. I’d go to deaf summer camps and learn ASL, or once semi-accidentally attended an extremely conservative camp in the south. They didn’t love me, but it opened all of our eyes. She signed me up for all boys baseball teams, but then also ballet and ballroom dancing. I went to every kind of school with every kind of student body you can imagine. That kind of movement wasn’t always easy at the time, but it gave me skills and values, and it’s something I insist on, and my son appreciates too. I believe it instills empathy, respect and humility. I am also happiest when I’m around all kinds of people and experiencing all kinds of things. It informs how I move in the world, the work I do, the community I build, and the company I keep.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m the founding director of Paid Leave for All, which is the national campaign of organizations fighting for federal paid family and medical leave in the United States. We launched in 2019 when these groups came together and realized they needed to become bigger than the sum of their parts. They committed to coordinating their strategy and work, sharing information and resources, and creating a campaign structure to accelerate their progress. The pandemic hit just months later and our work went into overdrive. We launched a war room, passed our country’s first temporary paid leave law of any kind, multiplied our members, achieved unprecedented organizing, media, and legislative gains, passed comprehensive paid leave in the House of Representatives for the very first time — and came within a vote of making it the law of the land.

I love this job because I care deeply about the mission– and it also brings together so much of the work I’ve done throughout my life into one place — communications, organizing, political strategy, and policy research. I’ve worked in media and communications throughout my career for Fortune 500 brands, electoral campaigns at every level, and grassroots organizations in the U.S. and abroad. I have held leadership positions at People For the American Way, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, American Bridge, Supermajority, and more. And I was able to put a lot of these pieces together while studying gender and policy at the London School of Economics. I have always been motivated by gender and racial equity, both because I’ve felt driven by justice since I was a kid and also because, in spite of what you might be hearing these days, diversity in leadership and policymaking leads to richer results for all of us.

I started working at the intersection of campaigns, communications, politics, and policy because I believe you can’t win good policy without winning in politics — and you can’t win elections without winning brands and messages. I saw that too often smart candidates weren’t connecting with people, and that great ideas and policies weren’t making progress because it’s much more than being smart or even evidence-based. It’s how you command attention and how you make people feel, and doing it with authenticity for the right reasons.

I enjoy launching new projects, managing and growing campaigns, and I look forward to closing this one when we have finished the job and finally passed paid leave in America. I believe passing paid leave will have impacts far beyond jobs and paychecks — it is a tool for everything from spurring entrepreneurship and creativity, to improving our maternal mortality rate, to decreasing depression. It’s about health and balance and dignity — being whole.

I’m most proud of how this campaign, with a fraction of the resources or field capacity of other issues — particularly those more oriented toward men — punched above our weight and nearly passed paid leave in the aftermath of COVID. We refused to give up because the stakes had been made so clear: this is about people’s livelihoods and lives. We pivoted, we worked through the night, we adapted policy and tactics to a constantly changing political landscape. The coalitions we collectively grew, the actions we pulled off, and often quietly on purpose, were a feat. When I got the call that paid leave was going to be restored and passed in the Build Back Better Act, I had never felt so many emotions at once. It was adrenaline-fueled, around-the-clock work for months, and while we haven’t finished the job, getting it that far against the odds because of the passion and grit of a movement is something I’m tremendously proud of.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I mentioned the overall story of fighting for paid leave throughout the ups and downs of the Build Back Better negotiations in Congress, but the arc of that story was a day in November of 2021. We had planned a national action and flown in advocates and coalitions from across the country to join us on the Capitol lawn to share stories all day in one last big push. This came on the heels of months of ups and downs, paid leave being in the legislative package and then out, midnight zooms, nonstop work. We were told just before the action was to be held that paid leave would be removed from the bill. We deliberated and decided to do it anyway, even if it ended up being a vigil, because we wanted to honor all of the people who’d fought with us. We wanted to honor their stories. We stood all day in pouring rain, more than eight hours.

And not only did every advocate show up and tell their story, but their family members, people in the audience, dozens of members of Congress, the media all did too. They told their stories of holding the pajamas of their child who had passed; of their spouse who fell apart in postpartum depression; of watching their parents slip away with cancer. It was one of the most important days of my life. And it wasn’t just grief we felt — it was common humanity; it was power. When I came home that night, soaking wet and exhausted, my young son told me not to give up, to keep hope.

Shortly after I got the call that paid leave would pass in the Build Back Better Act. What I felt in that moment was not my own resilience, but the power and resilience of a movement.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I finished my dream grad school program during a recession. I had a precise idea of what I wanted to do next, and in fact, I had an interview lined up for my dream job, my dream gig. I assumed it would work out. But it didn’t. And then my partner lost his job, and suddenly jobs were hard to come by. At the time, I’d wanted to work in women’s global politics out of DC, but I kept hitting wall after wall. It wasn’t the first time I hadn’t gotten a job, but it was the first time I went month after month and felt like the landscape kept getting harder. Fellowships didn’t work out; internships were flooded. Then, unexpectedly, I learned about an unpaid opportunity in Armenia, where some of my mother’s family was from. I knew nothing about the country at that time, and I didn’t even speak the language. It felt like a gamble, a complete unknown, maybe even a consolation. It turned out to be the best experience of my life. It was professionally and personally fulfilling beyond measure. And it took me getting to a place of the complete unknown to open my mind to new possibilities. That decision has changed my orientation ever since. It also led to all kinds of future opportunities I never would have known at the time. It gave me international experience, both grassroots organizing and high-level political work, but also a clear grounding that my work was needed at home — that gender is as much a struggle in the U.S., if not more, than many developing countries across the globe.

But what it imprinted on me, and I share often, is that the curveballs life throws you, even in times that may feel bleak, can end up being the opportunities and experiences of a lifetime.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://paidleaveforall.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paidleaveforall/?hl=en
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dawn-huckelbridge-430bab29/