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" Cecile Richards is best known today as the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund. A prominent Democratic, Richards has served as president of America Votes, and prior to that, deputy chief of staff to the U.S. Representative Nancy Pelosi.  Richards&amp;#039; demanding career certainly keeps her busy. But she finds the time to balance work with family. She had an amazing example in her feminist firebrand mom Ann Richards, the former governor of Texas. A mother of three, Richards&amp;#039; eldest daughter Lily, 26, seems to be following her mother and grandmother&amp;#039;s footsteps: She currently serves as the Deputy Communications Director for the Democratic National Committee. Related: The Year in Feminsm We listened in on an intimate conversation between mother and daughter about what it was like for Lily to grow up in such a fantastically feminist family, and what it has been like for Cecile to watch her daughter become powerful in her own right. Oh, and in case you ever wanted fashion tips from Ann Richards (affectionately called Mamey)\u2026 we got those, too. Cecile: You grew up in a family where your grandmother worked and I always worked. In fact, I&amp;#039;m not sure you&amp;#039;ve had a day where I was taking care of you instead of working, which is a terrible thing to admit. Did it ever occur to you not to work? Lily: I was fortunate in that I had two generations of women who were not only were role models in that they had demanding jobs, but they also instilled in me that you can have a job that&amp;#039;s fulfilling to you personally\u2014that hopefully, in some small way, whether it&amp;#039;s in your town or your city or even in your country, you can make some kind of change. I think it&amp;#039;s very rare to have examples of that in your own family that are just so tangible. It never seemed unusual for me that I wouldn&amp;#039;t be able to find a job that I loved. I feel very fortunate to have had that example in you and Mamey. Related: Growing Up With A Famous Mom: Christine Baranski&amp;#039;s Daughter Tells All Cecile: What was your first job? I&amp;#039;m trying to remember\u2026 Lily: My first job was probably selling lemonade on Third Avenue. We were incredibly entrepreneurial. We had, like, a total lemonade stand racket going on in Austin, Texas. From a very early age being entrepreneurial was part of my upbringing. My first real paid job out of college was a press assistant for the governor&amp;#039;s race in Virginia. But I think I decided to do politics was when I was a page in the House of Representatives and sort of got a front row seat to government. ELLE: What did you think about Lily going into politics? Cecile: Well, Lily is blessed with all the right genetic material and she&amp;#039;s rich with DNA [for it]. It&amp;#039;s been wonderful to see her in her various roles since college, and her confidence! I think she was three years old when my mom ran for governor and she seemed to, at a very early age, pick up on a lot of the lessons about that campaign. So it&amp;#039;s been really exciting to see her now use it professionally. I will say one of the funniest things now is to get an email from Lily, and her role at the DNC, talking about the very issues that I work on everyday\u2014Planned Parenthood or women&amp;#039;s rights. That&amp;#039;s pretty gratifying. I have friends around the country who will forward me an email from Lily Adams saying, &amp;#039;Is this your daughter?&amp;#039; Related: The Joy of Having To Work Lily: I feel the same way. Mom sends a lot of emails about issues that are very time sensitive, saying, you know, &amp;#039;Call now, call your congressman now,&amp;#039; but the subject line will just say &amp;#039;Call Now!&amp;#039; And an email you get from your mother that says, &amp;quot;Call Now!&amp;#039; usually means you&amp;#039;ve got to step out and dial the phone, but I would say 50% of the time it&amp;#039;s an email to the Planned Parenthood listserv. I was talking about how I was lucky to have role models in my own family, but who would you say was your first role model, mom? Cecile: Well, I actually believe it was my grandmother, Eleanor Richards. She lived her whole life in Waco, Texas, but because she was involved in the League of Women Voters, in civil rights issues, she had traveled around the world. She had been a delegate to the United Nations for the League. She really believed in women&amp;#039;s rights, and I was quite close to her.  Related: A Mother in the Trenches Lily: What do you think she&amp;#039;d say if she saw what you were doing now? Cecile: Oh, well, she would love this. In fact, every once and a while, I get to speak to a League of Women Voters group, and I would talk about her because that was her love and she believed in women&amp;#039;s rights and women voting. But I think her and Mom would be in disbelief that we are still fighting these same issues. And I wonder, Lily, for you, do you ever find that you are channeling your grandmother? Lily: Well, I hope I&amp;#039;m channeling my grandmother&amp;#039;s wit and humor as much as possible. She was definitely the funniest of all of us. But I think there are times where, Mom, you have a way of looking at issues and talking about them in a way that gets at the heart of the everyday woman\u2014especially women who don&amp;#039;t normally have a voice. ELLE: Lily, do you have any early memories of watching your mom work? Lily: Yeah. When we were kids in Texas my most indelible memory is watching mom start a nonprofit out of our living room. It never occurred to me that other people&amp;#039;s living rooms were anything other than mass-mailing centers. And I think that watching [my mom] see a vacuum for something and just start it up on her own gave me the confidence to take on new challenges or do new things that you may not know exactly how to do. Related: Stylish Mothers and Daughters Mom, what would you say the best advice your mom gave you in going to work was? Cecile: Well, absolutely the best advice she gave to me, and countless others, was, &amp;#039;Always say yes.&amp;#039; Never turn down a new opportunity. Particularly for women, too often we take ourselves out of the equation. You know, because we think we don&amp;#039;t have the skills or we don&amp;#039;t have the right degree or know the right people. And she always encouraged me and other women to just take the risk. I was having this conversation with a young woman who was doubting whether it was the right time to try a new job. She was listing all the things: her kids weren&amp;#039;t the right age or she was still hoping to finish this degree. Mom was about, well this is the only life you have, so do it. And that has always been the best advice. But what about you? She gave you advice too, all the time. Lily: Yeah, she gave me that advice, but I think the best advice on work I ever got from you was to never forget how fortunate you are to have a job that you love and have a job where you get to make a small or medium or big-sized difference in your community.  Related: Life According to Ireland Baldwin Cecile: I would be curious because there is a lot of stress in your work: What do you do to manage that or decompress? Lily: I decompress by doing the Sunday crossword puzzle and trying to get as far as I can in it. Cecile: We do it better together, don&amp;#039;t you think? Lily: We definitely do it better together. And then I also I think getting out, whether it&amp;#039;s going on a hike or going to the movies where you can unplug for at least couple of hours. It&amp;#039;s just important to get a little perspective. I don&amp;#039;t know, what about you? I guess you&amp;#039;d probably say baking? Cecile: Yeah, well, the danger is now that you and Hannah gave me the new KitchenAid mixer and I&amp;#039;ve got the pasta attachment! Boy, I&amp;#039;m having a heck of a time. That and baking a good pie is pretty much the highlight of my off time. I know you had your own little brush with Rush Limbaugh going after you on your radio show. And clearly you&amp;#039;ve chosen a line of work where not everyone loves you and there&amp;#039;s controversy. Lily: I can&amp;#039;t imagine where I got it from! Cecile: I feel very protective about you, but so proud of you, too, for not ever doing the easy thing, but doing the hard thing. How do you handle that? And do you ever wish you were doing work that is less public? Lily: On this stuff with people not liking you, it&amp;#039;s just the cost of doing business. I certainly don&amp;#039;t take the same kind of beating that you or other folks that run for office do. It&amp;#039;s so important that the rest of the stuff rolls off your back. And I think part of that I learned from you and watching Mamey before. I think at the end of the day you just have to stay grounded and, you know, keep do what you&amp;#039;re doing. Mamey used to say that seeing a dried egg on a plate in the morning is a lot dirtier than anything she&amp;#039;d seen in politics. Related: Fives Reasons To Care About the Texas Abortion Law (And One Reason Not To) Cecile: Lily can remember every good quote my mother ever made. I was actually thinking that your grandmother was kind of a fashion icon. You know, she had the hair going on! She had a lot of advice for both of us. But I was just curious about the best fashion advice she gave you or I ever gave you, or the worst\u2026? Lily: I think her best rule was never wear patterned clothes on television. Cecile: That&amp;#039;s a good one. Lily: That&amp;#039;s never a good idea. Let&amp;#039;s see, the best\u2026I don&amp;#039;t know. The best fashion advice she ever gave, well, never wear white shoes. That was a good rule. Cecile: Well that was from Jackie Onassis. That was a cardinal sin. Lily: It&amp;#039;s funny because clothes have never been a huge part of what we&amp;#039;ve bonded over. Now that mom does more and more TV, people talk to me about her fashion all the time. But there were certainly some perms back in the &amp;#039;90s and in late &amp;#039;80s that she probably wishes she could forget. Cecile: I was thinking about the worst fashion experience with my mom, but I think it was the perm in fourth grade. I don&amp;#039;t know if I can blame her, maybe it was my idea. But that was disaster and you&amp;#039;re right, I wish I could excise from Google all the perms. But you know\u2026 Lily: It was a bad era. ELLE: It was a bad era for everyone. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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