Since high school, Kristan Hawkins has been an advocate for the unborn and pro-life speaker/trainer. Her pro-life career began when she was asked to volunteer at a Pregnancy Resource Center during her sophomore year of high school. After spending 3 months counseling women not to abort their children, Kristan started the first pro-life group at her high school and eventually was asked to be the West Virginia Teens for Life President. It was during high school, where Kristan organized her first political protest and events aimed at educating students about abortion.

    After graduating high school as Valedictorian, Kristan went on to college and again started the first pro-life group on her college campus. In college, Kristan majored in Political Science with the hopes of becoming a full-time pro-life activist. In 2005, she graduated Summa Cum Laude from Bethany College in West Virginia.

    During college, Kristan worked for the 2004 Bush/Cheney re-election campaign.  Following graduation, she worked for the Republican National Committee and served as a political appointee in the George W. Bush administration at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

    Because of her grassroots organizing skills and passion for the unborn, Kristan became Students for Life of America’s (SFLA) first Executive Director in 2006. Since launching SFLA’s full-time operation, Kristan has helped more than double the number of campus pro-life groups in the United States, from 181 to over 500 by launching SFLA’s Full-Time Field Program. She has also helped to increase the size of their annual conference from 450 to 1200 students in 3 years. In addition to managing SFLA’s staff and daily operations, Kristan serves as the organization’s official spokeswoman and has appeared multiple times on Fox News, CNN, and the Christian Broadcasting Network; she has also been quoted in numerous national and regional newspapers. Kristan currently hosts the radio show “On Campus with Students for Life” on National Pro-life Radio and writes a weekly column for Lifenews.com. Every year, Kristan speaks to hundreds of youth and adult pro-life activists across the country motivating and training them in how to end abortion in America.

    Most recently, Kristan is known for her work leading the successful Stop the Abortion Mandate Coalition which brought together over 70 pro-life and pro-family leaders in a national coalition dedicated to stopping government funding of abortion in healthcare reform. In addition, she launched HealthcareforGunner.com in June of 2009, a website dedicated to her son Gunner who suffers from cystic fibrosis, to raise the issue of healthcare rationing in government healthcare systems.

    Since working at SFLA, Kristan has been awarded the Susan B. Anthony Young Leader Award, the Dr. William Hogan Education Award for pro-life leadership, and the 2009 Weyrich Youth Leadership Award. In the fall of 2009, Kristan’s work and passion for the unborn was featured in the Washington Examiner’s Credo column as well as the Arlington Catholic Herald. In May of 2010, Kristan was featured in Focus on the Family’s Citizen Magazine and selected as the Rising Voice’s Millennial of the Month in September of 2010. In November of 2010, Kristan was award a Life Prize of $100,000 from the Gerard Health Foundation for her pro-life work.

    Kristan regularly speaks to student and adult pro-life groups about pro-life activism and politics.

    Kristan resides in Martinsburg, West Virginia with her husband, Jonathan, and two small sons, Gunner and Bear.