– Start the fire. Shannon Watts is best known as the woman who tackled gun violence. In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting, which killed 20 children, Watts started Moms Demand Action.
More than a decade later, Watts is still passionate about gun safety—but she’s widening her remit as well. Last month, she published her new book Fired Up. She wants to help other women “come alive” the way she did when in rapid succession she left behind corporate communications, her first marriage, and stay-at-home motherhood to start what became the largest women-led nonprofit in the U.S. “I was in a career I didn’t love and when I started Moms Demand Action, it felt very much like alchemy, like magic,” she remembers. “I watched thousands of other women have the same experience. What I realized was, we transformed the issue of gun safety … but the issue also transformed us.”
She needed that push. She knew she “didn’t want to sell companies widgets anymore,” but she didn’t know what she did want. “Men are socialized to follow their desires. Women are taught to fulfill their obligations,” she says she realized. Her new book is an effort to flip that dynamic and prompt women to instead ask themselves, What do I want?
What she doesn’t want, now, is to help women find their “purpose.” There is no one purpose, Watts argues. “You can spend a lot of time trying to find out what that one true purpose is and overlook fulfillment,” she says.
Case in point: Watts is living in Florida now, and after helping elect thousands of candidates, she doesn’t say no to running for office herself. “I love being the underdog,” she says.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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