Cynthia Richie Terrell Email & Phone Number

Cynthia Richie Terrell is the founder and executive director of RepresentWomen and an outspoken advocate for institutional reforms to advance women’s representation and leadership in the United States. Terrell and her husband Rob Richie helped to found FairVote - a nonpartisan champion of electoral reforms that give voters greater choice, a stronger voice, and a more representative democracy. Terrell has worked on projects related to women's representation, democracy, and voting system reform in the United States and has worked to help parliamentarians around the globe meet UN goals for women’s representation and leadership. Terrell has worked on political campaigns, as campaign manager and field director for candidates for the U.S. presidency, U.S. House and U.S. Senate, for governor and for state and city-wide initiative efforts, including a state equal rights amendment. In 2024 Terrell was named one of Washington, DC's top policy expert and received a Generational Impact Award for her work on voting system reform. Terrell is a member of the Citizen University's Civic Collaboratory and was named a Brewer Fellow along with a cohort of leaders in the democracy reform movement. Terrell has a chapter on women and the presidency in the 2020 volume The Best Candidate: Presidential Nomination in Polarized Times. Terrell writes a weekly column on women’s representation for Ms Magazine and has been published in numerous print journals including: the Washington Post, The New York Times, The Hill, Refinery29, The Nation, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, The American Prospect, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Baltimore Sun, and The Christian Science Monitor. She has appeared on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal; and has participated in numerous radio shows, podcasts & panel discussions on the topics of electoral reform and systems strategies to advance women’s representation and leadership. Terrell is an avid knitter & gardener, has three children, and is active in local politics and in the Quaker community. She graduated with a B.A. in political science from Swarthmore College in 1986.