Meet Lisa Borders

You’re the first C.E.O. of Time’s Up, a self-described political movement toward eradicating sexual harassment in the workplace. What are your goals?
It’s really about gender equality. We can’t boil the ocean, so we’re going to start in some key areas: cultures, companies and laws. Oftentimes, you’ll see companies change via a top-down approach, but this is a much more flattened approach, where we want to not only embrace the voices but internalize them, and then make decisions.

Do you think that there are concerns that the organization — which was founded by female farmworkers and celebrities — has been too focused on famous people?
No, I don’t think so. There have been celebrities who have lifted the Time’s Up narrative and mission, and when you’re driving awareness, that’s a very helpful thing. But this started with a letter on behalf of 700,000 female farmworkers to some of those celebrities expressing their support and solidarity. The manifestation of Time’s Up and women supporting women was brought to life at the Golden Globes earlier this year, where some celebrities brought activists as their dates, and others wore black in solidarity. People would die for that kind of notoriety to bring awareness to the mission. I think it’s genius for the farmworkers to do that.

Considering all this awareness, do you think things are changing quickly enough?
Well, that depends on your expectation levels. I realize that things that have been broken for centuries do not get fixed in five minutes. Civil rights didn’t happen in five minutes, but it did happen. Those advances took years. They took demonstrations, they took economic boycotts, they took negotiations, they took freedom riders. And now, here we are, looking at the civil rights movement for women in this time. I’m not willing to have it take a glacial pace, but I don’t expect to snap my fingers and it’s going to be corrected.

Lisa Michelle Borders is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Time’s Up. She was formerly the president of the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) and the former Vice President of Global Community Affairs at The Coca-Cola Company. She became the fourth president of the WNBA on February 10, 2016. She previously served as president of the Atlanta City Council of Atlanta, Georgia from 2004 to 2010, having been elected at-large in an August 10, 2004 special election, her first run for public office.

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