Rebecca Hart Holder is a strategist who helps advocates, coalitions, and funders build durable power in volatile political environments.
For nearly a decade, as President of Reproductive Equity Now, Rebecca built one of the most effective state-level policy operations in the country. In the immediate aftermath of Dobbs, she led the campaign that secured the nation’s first telehealth provider shield law, establishing a legal framework that enabled Massachusetts clinicians to serve patients in states where abortion was banned. The model reshaped what blue states could do when federal protections collapsed.
Under Rebecca’s leadership, Massachusetts strengthened abortion access through the ROE Act, expanded contraceptive coverage, repealed pre-Roe criminal bans, and enacted the Reproductive Health Access Law. She later expanded the organization into Connecticut and New Hampshire, creating the first regional reproductive rights advocacy model in the nation.
Rebecca is known for her ability to see the full chessboard in moments of crisis — legal constraints, political openings, governance realities, coalition incentives, funding strategy — and to move quickly and decisively. She helps leaders convert instability into structural advantage.
Rebecca holds a JD from UC Berkeley School of Law, where she was Senior Publishing Editor of the California Law Review, and a BA in History and Spanish from Mount Holyoke College. She was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to investigate human rights abuses against Indigenous women in Guatemala. Prior to her time at Reproductive Equity Now, she served as Federal Policy Director at the National Abortion Federation and Associate Director of Programs at Provide. She is a founding member of the State Abortion Access Network (SAAN), which provides critical tools, resources, and support to state-based reproductive advocacy organizations. She has been recognized as one of Out Magazine's 2022 Top 100 LGBTQ+ Policy Makers and Advocates Changing the World and one of the Boston Business Journal's 2022 Power 50 Leaders.
Rebecca does not offer theory. She builds power where it matters most.
Photo by Kenzie Odegaard Fields
How I think about the work.
For most of the last half century, federal institutions served as the primary arena for securing fundamental rights. That era has shifted. Today, power lives where infrastructure, legal architecture, and governing alignment make decisive action possible — in states, and increasingly, in the coordinated action of states and coalitions working together.
When federal institutions retreat, power does not disappear. It relocates to those who are ready to hold it.
Catalytic moments require catalytic thinking and catalytic capital. Leaders must see beyond immediate defense and design the next architecture of authority, before public momentum fully forms. Strategic investment deployed early allows leaders to define the framework, secure credibility, and take irreversible first steps.
Durable power is cumulative: stabilization, expansion, replication. It demands clarity, alignment, and the willingness to act before certainty arrives.
The most consequential work of this era will not be rhetorical. It will be structural. And it will be built by those who moved first.