Rhiannon Carnes
FOUNDER & EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR (SHE/HER)
Rhiannon Carnes’ drive to make change and create brave spaces to build community runs deep. As the daughter of a lifelong artist, writer, and advocate—Faye Childs—Rhiannon knew from a young age that if you want to see real change happen, you have to get to work. This philosophy led her mom to eventually become a leader in Black publishing and the founder of BlackBoard, an organization that uplifted Black authors in a publishing landscape characterized by gross underrepresentation of BIPOC communities.
In 2016, Rhiannon became increasingly outraged as the presidential race played out. The same racism and sexism she had experienced throughout her life were playing out on the national stage—eventually leading to the election result that meant America could no longer pretend white supremacy was a thing of the past. As a Black single mother, survivor of gun violence, and military veteran, she could not be silent as extremist conservatives tried to chip away at the freedom, dignity, and humanity of BIPOC communities, especially Black women. Rhiannon turned to her mother for guidance and wisdom, who encouraged her to get to work.
A few days after the election, Rhiannon found the Women’s March via Facebook; the organizers sought someone to lead Ohio’s march in January 2017. With a corporate and healthcare background, Rhiannon did not have experience with community organizing, but she said yes anyway. “There are not too many Black women or women of color in this new feminist movement. I knew this was a movement where all women had to come together. I finally felt that women of color could have a voice and be leaders in this movement, so I took it as an opportunity to use my voice.”
And so Rhiannon became the founder and leader of Ohio’s Women’s March. After many long hours collaborating with national leaders and recruiting over 100 volunteers, on January 21, 2017, over 15,000 women, gender-expansive folks, and allies took the Ohio streets with Rhiannon leading the way to the Statehouse. After the success of the Women’s March, she became a field organizer with Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio, where she worked for two years before beginning to work with Erin Scott to co-found Ohio Women’s Alliance.
In 2019, Rhiannon and Erin began meeting over coffee to share their hopes for an Ohio that prioritizes the well-being, prosperity, and liberation of BIPOC women and gender-expansive folks, especially Black women. They envisioned a year-round organizing group that centers grassroots leaders in Ohio. To get started, they set out on a state-wide listening tour to identify the issues that impact our constituents the most, the challenges we face, and the hopes and priorities we have for the future of our communities. The tour led to our Pillars of Prosperity—the values platform that laid the foundation for the official launch of Ohio Women’s Alliance in late 2019 and the OWA Action Fund in 2020.
Since then, Rhiannon’s accomplishments have been celebrated in Elle, The Nation, Harper’s BAZAAR, and Cosmopolitan, and she was named a Reproductive Justice Hero and a 2022 Jane Bagley Lehman Award winner by the Tides’ Foundation.
Ohio Women’s Alliance was the only Black-led founding organization of Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights—the coalition that led the campaign to pass Ohio’s Reproductive Freedom Amendment in November 2023. As a member of the Executive Committee, from the beginning, Rhiannon advocated to ensure that Black communities were prioritized in the amendment language and in the campaign’s voter education and GOTV strategies. OWA was instrumental in moving the campaign beyond using stigmatizing language, and to center abortion and abortion storytellers instead.
The only abortion storytellers who worked full-time on the campaign were OWA Staff members, and Rhiannon and her team crafted the messaging for Black voters and led the only BIPOC-focused field program. OWA’s 40 canvassers made over 1.3 million calls, sent over 150,000 texts, and knocked on nearly 19,000 doors. Exit polling published by The Washington Post shows that voter turnout among the groups we contacted was historic. And, despite being the smallest and youngest organization involved with the campaign, OWA ran the largest field program, giving Ohio the push necessary to secure the historic win, with 57% of Ohioans voting to pass the Amendment.
“Leading a 501(c)3 and 501(c)4 that both share the value of Black liberation allows us to bring together the perfect formula for change-making: communal care, leadership development, youth empowerment, and advocacy. What brought me to the movement was my own trauma and pain, but what kept me in the movement was community and uplifting women who did not have the same opportunities as me,” Rhiannon says about becoming a leader of Reproductive Justice work in Ohio. “This work is hard. We get tired and burned out from fighting every day for our rights. OWA and the OWA Action Fund are supportive spaces where we can heal and help each other as we keep fighting.”