Photo credit: Victor Demarchelier
Christy Turlington Burns rose to fame as a supermodel in the late 1980s but has since become a leading voice in global maternal health. After experiencing childbirth complications, she earned a master’s in public health from Columbia and began working with organizations like CARE and Product Red.
In 2010, she directed No Woman, No Cry and founded Every Mother Counts, a nonprofit dedicated to making pregnancy and childbirth safer worldwide. Through EMC, she’s invested over $48 million in community-led programs across 17 countries and continues to champion maternal health through advocacy, filmmaking, and mentorship.
