At this year’s Social Innovation Summit held in San Francisco from June 3-4, supermodel and activist Christy Turlington Burns, 56, joined several other headlining speakers including political analyst and advocate Van Jones, and Latino Community Foundation CEO Julian Castro.

While I was unable to attend the summit, Turlington told me in a recent interview that she took the stage to discuss an issue that, as several attendees admitted afterward, hadn’t previously been centered: maternal health. Back in 2010, Turlington launched her nonprofit, Every Mother Counts, which has invested over $48 million toward improving health outcomes for mothers around the world. 

The issue is deeply personal to her. Turlington spoke candidly about her own postpartum complications, persistent racial and geographic disparities in care, and the cultural disconnect that keeps so many Americans from recognizing the maternal health crisis in their own backyard. “All of us came through a mother,” she told the audience at the summit, “and the more people make that connection, the more they care.”

For Turlington, the journey from fashion icon to maternal health champion wasn’t a clean break, but a series of layered experiences including personal loss and a growing recognition that her public platform could serve the public good. In our recent conversation, she reflected on her early foray into activism as an antismoking advocate, why she launched Every Mother Counts, how her understanding of philanthropy has evolved, and how a small, nimble nonprofit can punch above its weight by building community.

What shaped your earliest ideas about giving and service?

I don’t know that I thought of my early philanthropy as philanthropy, actually, when I started, which is probably not unusual for most individuals. I grew up in a home where I think service was just sort of intrinsic. My mom is from Central America, and when I was a middle school [student] and teenager, she was doing a hotline for folks who were HIV positive. We lived in the Bay Area, and my early exposure was that. So she was always engaged in a lot of different things at the community level, but also, I would say, national and global. I would probably give her credit for how I think of it myself. 

In my early 20s, and well into my career as a model, I had lots of opportunities to support organizations and causes, HIV being probably the first and most central to the fashion industry and my community here in New York. But in addition to that, I also did some work with my mom’s background, coming from El Salvador and post-war El Salvador, I did various events and fundraising on behalf of that effort. And then I lost my father to lung cancer in the late ’90s. I would say that was sort of the beginning of my engagement in public health. 

What did that shift look like?

The first thing I did was reach out to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Lung Association and offer my story and my platform to raise awareness around the importance of cessation and prevention. That I think was the beginning of the work that I do now in the sense that my personal testimony and experience really drove and led my passion. It was also very healing to share my story and to be of service and contribute my perspective and experience in the loss and also my own addiction to tobacco products as a young person.

That set me in a different direction and brought me to D.C. in the late ’90s when tobacco [awareness] was having a moment. I was able to testify at some of the congressional hearings at the time. Because I was coming from the fashion industry, which has often glamorized tobacco products, it was somewhat impactful in connection to my previous profession. I was also able to participate in a press conference for the very first Surgeon General’s report on women and tobacco. 

I became a mom in 2003. I had a postpartum hemorrhage after the delivery of my daughter. And that’s really what kind of set me on the path that I’m on and have been for 21 years as an advocate for maternal health. The hope was to raise more awareness, because women and girls were dying at ridiculous rates globally. When I became a mom, that was not a conversation that was being had.

I knew there was a need and a gap so I went back to school and studied public health at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health and worked on my very first documentary film called “No Woman No Cry” that came out in 2010. When the film came out, that’s what gave way to Every Mother Counts. We were an awareness-raising campaign, initially, to go with the film, and then eventually, we became a 501c3 and have been going strong.

What gave you the confidence to transition from being an activist and doing work as an individual to feeling like the next step was creating this nonprofit? 

I don’t think I would have ever thought of establishing a foundation. I didn’t know that that was as needed. It really did take me a while to really get to learn and meet all the stakeholders that were in the space to sort of assess what was missing, what was needed. I would say it was that personal storytelling and that way in for folks. We know why women are dying. Eighty percent of the deaths are preventable. There’s not that many global issues, I think, where it’s that clear.

I had done some work supporting others in their endeavors, in their philanthropy. I was sort of there in the early days with the ONE Campaign, the early days with Project RED. I was an ambassador for CARE for a few years before deciding that there was a need and a demand for what Every Mother Counts offers.

Really, what I see our role being most central to is offering people that way in — a more tangible way than simply writing a check and signing a petition, although those are things that are all welcome and needed. I’m really hopeful that people can share their stories, and by sharing their stories, we can help to educate and empower others to have a better experience. Our mission really is about ensuring equitable access to safe and respectful maternity care for all, here in the U.S. and in the eight other countries where we work. 

How has your view of philanthropy changed since launching Every Mother Counts?

I don’t think I really knew what the word meant. When I heard the definition, I was like, “Oh, I can associate myself with that. The love of humanity.” Like, it’s beautiful, it’s broad, it’s simple. But in the United States or in the West, philanthropy has become something that is really dominated and owned by those that have extreme wealth. But what I’ve done with Every Mother Counts, I don’t think of as philanthropy — or I hadn’t thought of it as philanthropy until really, really, very recently. What I do is really advocacy. It’s advocating for change — for systems change, for individual change — and putting all I have toward the cause. I was able to put myself through school, produce and direct a film, fund it myself. But to me, somehow, I separated philanthropy with a capital “P” and the work that I do. 

But I realize there’s a huge spectrum, like with everything, and there are folks even with that extreme wealth that are very hands-on. I’ve learned myself just through the support that our organization has received that it is really the individuals that have supported our work most that are the largest donors to the work. It’s grown over time and what I tried to do when I started the organization — inviting people into a conversation and getting them an opportunity to be part of a movement. 

You recently spoke at the Social Innovation Summit. What stood out to you?

I got really good feedback. I speak at a lot of different things, whenever possible. I had so many people approach me after my panel to, first of all, acknowledge that maternal health hadn’t previously been centered. There were a few people that were pregnant, or a few people who had just had children, so they were very much connecting to the topic and my personal story, as well as [former Teen Vogue Editor-in-Chief] Elaine Welteroth’s. I was also able to meet others throughout the day that had either their companies that were interested in Every Mother Counts and ways to engage with their employees and/or people who were just like, ‘I had a platform that could be useful.’ 

What’s giving you hope in maternal health today — and what are you most concerned about?

Well, it’s definitely a hard time right now. Right now, with the threats to Medicaid, it’s going to make a huge impact. Already, more than 40% of births are covered by Medicaid. And obviously, birth is only one of the many things that Medicaid covers. We have a lot of work ahead of us as a small maternal health organization in helping the public understand what Medicaid does and who it serves most. I had a conversation with a Kaiser physician friend of mine in Oakland who lamented when people say ‘people on Medicaid.’ People aren’t on Medicaid. They get their care through Medicaid. So there’s a lot to do in terms of still educating the public. 

We focus on four key populations: Black women, Indigenous women, rural women and displaced women. So helping people to understand those intersections and overlaps is a big part of what we do. That said, all of us came through a mother, right? So [there’s always that] upside of the issue that I talk about and advocate for, the more people I talk to, the more people who make that connection, the more people who care. 

Every Mother Counts just celebrated a milestone. What does this moment mean for the organization?

This year is our 15-year anniversary, and that’s felt like a really big milestone for an organization like ours that’s still quite small and nimble, but which has had a lot of impact. We launched an Endurance Fund around Mother’s Day, which is really speaking to the moment we’re in. There’s so much uncertainty around funding. Maternal health has become sort of thrown into the bucket of reproductive health and rights. But we’ve already seen the impacts on all maternal healthcare services, no matter who you are or what zip code you live in, because of that very extreme polarization [around reproductive health policy]. So it’s an opportunity to educate and show how dangerous it is when we try to control women’s bodies.