Shannon Watts, founder of Mama’s Request Action, encourages women to pursue their desires
– Start the fire. Shannon Watts is best known as the woman who worked on it Gun violence. In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting, which killed 20 children, Watts began a mama demand action.
More than a decade later, Watts is still passionate about gun safety, but she has also expanded her authority. Last month she published her new book I was fired. She wants to help other women “come to life” as she did when they quickly and consecutively left corporate communications, her first marriage, and home-based motherhood, becoming the largest woman-led nonprofit in the United States. “I saw thousands of other women going through the same thing. What I noticed was changing the gun safety issue…but this issue has changed us too.”

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She needed that push. She knew she “don’t want to sell corporate widgets anymore” but what did she know? did want. “Men are socialized to follow their desires. Women are taught to fulfill their duties,” she says. Her new book is an effort to encourage women to ask themselves instead, What do you want?
What she doesn’t want is to help women find their “purpose” now. There is no one purpose, Watts argues. “You can spend a lot of time finding what that one true purpose is and overlooking the sense of fulfillment,” she says.
Case study: Watts currently lives in Florida and after selecting thousands of candidates, she doesn’t say no to running herself. “I love being a loser,” she says.
Emma Hinchliff
Emma.Hinchliffe@Fortune.com
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