Cresta Kowalski

Maryland State Education Association

Cresta Kowalski serves as a UniServ director for the Maryland State Education Association, representing 1,500 education professionals across Allegany and Garrett counties. In that role, she negotiates contracts covering wages, benefits and working conditions while advocating for educator rights as public sector workers.

Kowalski also serves as chairperson of the Mountain Maryland Alliance for Reproductive Freedom, an organization she helped found following the Dobbs decision in June 2022. Recognizing that rural health care access was woefully deficient across the region and that access to abortion and reproductive choice was nonexistent for people in rural Appalachia, she and a small group of community members formed the organization with the hopes of establishing an independent clinic within 10 years.

That timeline was accelerated. Within six months, Kowalski connected with the Women’s Health Center of West Virginia, which was seeking to relocate its abortion services after West Virginia shuttered abortion access in June 2022. She mobilized alliance members to raise funds supporting the move, and within one year the Women’s Health Center of Maryland opened, offering a wide range of reproductive health care to the community. The clinic has since expanded its services to include medicine and surgical abortion care as well as gender-affirming care. Kowalski continues her involvement as a member of the Board of Directors for the Women’s Health Center of Maryland and West Virginia.

Her mentorship work focuses on one-on-one meetings with rural community members, encouraging engagement in reproductive justice, social justice, LGBTQ+ rights and economic justice. Mentees have gone on to join community organizations as volunteers, pursue employment connected to their activism and run for public office.

This is an honoree profile from The Daily Record’s Top 100 Women awards. Information for this profile was sourced from the honoree’s application for the award. The honoree profiles were written using an artificial intelligence program and supported by honoree nominations, applications and letters of recommendation. Each profile was reviewed, fact-checked and edited for accuracy by The Daily Record’s editorial staff.