Mark Salo

For the past 30 years, Mark Salo, CEO of Planned Parenthood of San Diego and Riverside Counties, has helped inform women of their reproductive rights. Salo, 61, has seen his staff, budget and number of women served grow. And the chapter is still growing. “It’s expanding like crazy,” says Salo. “We are just like Starbucks; whenever we open a new clinic, more women are coming and lines are forming in front of the doors.”

Planned Parenthood is a nationwide organization for reproductive health care through education and advocacy. The organization teaches about sexually transmitted infections and diseases, birth control methods and general medical information and offers gynecological services and abortion.

“It is gratifying and satisfying to see that women across the whole nation now see that they have the right to decide about reproduction themselves,” says Salo.

Planned Parenthood has nearly 850 health care centers throughout the country; 19 are in San Diego and Riverside counties. Since 1963, when Planned Parenthood of San Diego and Riverside Counties opened, it has succeeded in improving health care services and expanding family planning, says Salo. The result is a reduction in the number of unintended pregnancies and sexually transmissible infections, he adds.

“The most important contribution to the community we made is that we’ve shown women that they are able to make their own decisions for their own best interest,” Salo says. “We’ve grown from being the provider of last resort to the provider of choice, and how great is that?”

The Mission Valley office of Planned Parenthood is “becoming a great medical institution. It’s important to have a teaching component,” says Salo. “But it’s also important to have a research component. It was a great opportunity to be a trial site for mifepristone, the abortion pill. The tests ran a few years ago, and because of the results we now provide the abortion pill in our centers.”

Salo started with Planned Parenthood 30 years ago as a volunteer receptionist at a center in Washington state. “During one class at the University of Washington the director of Planned Parenthood came to speak to us. That’s when I knew this was the organization I wanted to work for,” says Salo. Besides his job, Salo loves to hike in Utah and Arizona. He is married and has two children.

— Ciska Borsboom