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To hear former Planned Parenthood Southeast staffers tell it, the alarm bells started going off in the summer of 2024. The latest CEO had just been ousted, and the organization needed a seasoned reproductive rights advocate to lead it through a period of unprecedented political and institutional upheaval. Instead, Mairo Akposé, the new interim chief executive, was an HR specialist with no background in reproductive health issues who had a side business managing a portfolio of Atlanta-area Airbnbs. 

Over the next year, the staffers’ unease deepened. The right wing’s playbook has long been to decimate Planned Parenthood by starving it of resources; with the reelection of Donald Trump, affiliates have faced massive funding cuts that threatened access to the full range of health care services that Planned Parenthood provides, including abortion, birth control, breast cancer screenings, Pap smears, STI testing, and sex education. Affiliates in multiple states have closed locations in response to the cuts.

The region served by Planned Parenthood’s Southeastern chapter—Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi—is one of America’s poorest and most conservative, dominated by lawmakers intent on pushing ever-more-draconian policies regardless of their impact on reproductive care. In years past, PPSE stood up strongly against such policies, with its CEO serving as the affiliate’s most public face and loudest voice. That work has become even more important since the reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022, as Alabama and Mississippi have implemented near-total abortion bans and Georgia has banned the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy under virtually all circumstances.

“In a region particularly hit by reproductive oppression…I feel very frightened as a professional, as an advocate, and as a patient.”

But instead of helping steer Planned Parenthood Southeast through the Trump-era turmoil, Mairo Akposé has touched off a new crisis that has left the organization and its allies badly shaken. Activists say it’s a red flag about the kinds of threats Planned Parenthood and its affiliates could likely face in an increasingly hostile political landscape.

What’s happening at PPSE “feels very dangerous in this moment,” said Elizabeth Ann Mosley, a reproductive health researcher and advocate based in Atlanta who has worked closely with the organization in the past. “In a region particularly hit by reproductive oppression…I feel very frightened as a professional, as an advocate, and as a patient.”

Akposé joined PPSE as an HR consultant in 2023 and became interim CEO in July 2024; late last year, staff were told that she would be in the CEO job indefinitely. Her lack of experience in the reproductive rights movement wasn’t the only thing that made her an odd choice for such a high-profile position. On social media, she was The Working Wife (mantra: “God. Spouse. Children. Career…in that order”) and the Wise ‘Ol HR Lady of TikTok. She was also a proud trustee of Georgia’s Berry College, one of the country’s most conservative higher-ed institutions. Yet even as her role solidified and expanded, Akposé was rarely out front when it came to PPSE’s work; her LinkedIn profile didn’t even mention Planned Parenthood Southeast by name.

The people Akposé hired for leadership positions were as new to the reproductive health world as she........

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