Katie Hill: ‘Change is too important to step out of the arena’

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August 17, 2020

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Rent the Runway ditches retail, W Magazine has a new group of investors, and Katie Hill isn’t leaving politics behind. Go get your Monday.

– Down but not out.  It’s nearly impossible to rattle Katie Hill.

The former congresswoman has faced leaked, nonconsensual nude photos; attacks by, she says, her estranged husband and GOP operatives (her husband has denied any involvement); and a traumatic resignation from her hard-fought seat in Congress. If you ask her a question now, she’ll answer it.

That includes this one: would she ever seek elected office again? “Never say no,” she told me.

I spoke to Hill earlier this month about her new book, She Will Rise: Becoming a Warrior in the Battle for True Equality. In the book, Hill addresses the sequence of events that led her to give up her congressional seat and the personal and professional aftermath of that decision. Parts of it are an intense read, covering abuse, depression, family secrets, and trauma.

But Hill is also looking ahead—writing to show girls and women considering running for office one day that even the “worst-case scenario” she experienced isn’t a life-ruiner. “By surviving, making it out of it, raising the question—could I have politically survived if I’d stayed in?—that might make young people feel like this isn’t something that would be career-ending to them,” she told me.

Hill also explains exactly what is so traumatic about cyber exploitation (“revenge porn,” she says, is a misnomer) and what domestic abuse can look like when it doesn’t involve physical violence.

For more on Hill’s experience and her new book, read our Q+A here. Also keep an eye out for Hill’s influence on the 2020 cycle with her new PAC, HER Time. Even if she doesn’t run for office again, Hill doesn’t plan to leave politics entirely. “Change is too important to step out of the arena,” she says.

Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe

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