Background and career
Brad Parscale (born January 3, 1976) is an American digital consultant, media executive, and political advisor. He served as the senior adviser for data and digital operations for Donald Trump's 2020 presidential campaign. He previously served as the digital media director for Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and as campaign manager for Donald Trump's 2020 presidential campaign from February 2018 to July 2020, being replaced by Bill Stepien. In September 2020, he stepped away from his company and the Trump campaign. Parscale began working for the Trump Organization in 2011, developing and designing websites and creating and managing digital media strategies. In early 2015, Trump hired Parscale and his firm, Giles-Parscale, to create a website for his exploratory campaign. When Trump declared himself a Republican candidate in 2015, he asked Parscale to update the exploratory campaign site into a "full-fledged presidential campaign website." Throughout the Republican primary, Parscale was responsible on behalf of Trump for managing the website, as well as digital media strategies and online fundraising campaigns. In June 2016, Parscale was officially named digital media director for the Trump for President campaign, overseeing all aspects of digital media and online fundraising, as well as traditional media strategy, like radio and television placements. In January 2017, Parscale, along with senior Trump aide Nick Ayers, launched America First Policies, an organization to promote President Trump's agenda and White House initiatives. In 2025, Parscale was named Chief Strategy Officer of Salem Media Group. Since 2026, he has worked for the Israeli government, including through his company Clock Tower X, using various technologies to address declining support for Israel among American conservatives.
Parscale was born in Topeka, Kansas. His father, Dwight Parscale, was an assistant attorney general in Kansas who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1974 at age 28 as a Democrat. Dwight Parscale owned a restaurant and operated a string of other businesses over the years, with Brad's mother, Rita. In the 1990s, Dwight Parscale was the CEO of NewTek, a computer products company. Parscale, who is 6 ft 8 in (203 cm), played basketball at Shawnee Heights High School in Tecumseh, Kansas, graduating in 1994. He then attended two junior colleges, playing basketball well enough to get an athletic scholarship at the University of Texas at San Antonio. His father relocated NewTek to San Antonio while Parscale was playing basketball there. Parscale left UT-San Antonio after one year; a knee injury cost him his sports scholarship. He transferred to Trinity University, also in San Antonio, where he earned a bachelor's degree in finance, international business and economics, graduating in 1999.
Parscale moved to Orange County, California, following graduation from college to work for his father, then the CEO of animation-software company Electric Image; Parscale worked as the sales manager. The company filed for bankruptcy in August 2002, and Parscale and his parents returned to San Antonio. Electric Image animation software was reconstituted as Electric Image Animation System 3D (eias3d.com). In San Antonio, Parscale became a website developer. In October 2005, he incorporated his website business, which mostly produced simple websites for brick-and-mortar businesses in the area. Parscale has said that he started the company with an initial investment of $500; real estate records show that he owned three San Antonio homes at the time.
After Parscale worked on several projects with graphic and web designer Jill Giles (who had her own small firm), the company Giles–Parscale was formed in July 2011. In early 2013, Parscale was also running another company, DevDemon, which marketed add-ons for web development; in a technology investment partnership (Turner Parscale LLC); and was involved in a physical therapy business. By May 2015, Giles-Parscale owned a 18,000 square foot building and had 46 employees and 800 clients. In April 2012, the company was hired to build a website for Trump International Realty, after a deliberately low bid of $10,000. That led to further work in the Trump family: Trump Winery, the Eric Trump Foundation, and Caviar Complexe, Melania Trump's line of skin-care products. It also led to the firm's extensive work for the Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign, and Parscale becoming the campaign's digital director. In mid-2017, Parscale spun off his political work to a new company, Parscale Strategy, and relocated that business to Florida. In August 2017, the remaining company operations were purchased by CloudCommerce, a penny-stock firm, in a deal valued at $9 million in stock, and were renamed Parscale Digital. CloudCommerce also acquired San Antonio-based Parscale Media, but not Florida-based Parscale Strategy; Parscale became a member of the CloudCommerce board of directors. In June 2018, Giles Design Bureau was broken out as a separate entity, run by Giles, with a staff of 15; Giles remained a major stockholder in CloudCommerce.
In early 2015, Parscale's firm, Giles-Parscale, was hired to create a website for Donald Trump's exploratory campaign, charging $1,500 (~$2,037 in 2025) for the work. Between October and December 2015, Giles-Parscale was paid $21,000 (~$27,832 in 2025) by the Trump campaign. Through the entire election cycle, Giles-Parscale was paid $94 million by the Trump campaign, much of which was used to pay for advertising and subcontractors. In 2016, Parscale was named the campaign's digital director. Parscale used social media advertisements with an experiment-based strategy of different face expressions, font colors, and slogans like "Basket of Deplorables." Parscale's specific roles included heading the oversight of the digital advertising, television advertising, small dollar fundraising, direct mail, political and advertising budget, and liaising with Katie Walsh, who was then the Republican National Committee's chief of staff. He was also the head of data science and research, which included polling. Parscale heavily used employees from Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other platforms for the campaign advertisements and embedded them on his staff to navigate the Facebook, Twitter, and Google platforms so that his staff could utilize all capabilities of these platforms. He denied having any assistance linked to Russia. Parscale did not have data scientists or any digital team during the Republican primary and did much of the social media advertising from his own home. Parscale was able to utilize Facebook advertising to directly target individual voters in swing states. Parscale later said that he was able to target specific audiences who cared about infrastructure and promoted Trump and his message of improving American infrastructure. Although he hired Cambridge Analytica to assist with microtargeting and Cambridge Analytica stated that it was the key to Trump's victory, Parscale denied that he gained assistance from the firm because he thinks that Cambridge Analytica's use of psychographics doesn't work. Parscale also said: "I understood early that Facebook was how Donald Trump was going to win. Twitter is how he talked to the people. Facebook was going to be how he won." The Trump campaign initially had solely Donald Trump's personal funding to back his campaign. Parscale set up a major grassroots campaign on Facebook that brought in funding quickly from across the U.S. Parscale attributed the success of his vast social media presence to using the assistance offered by companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Google. He said that because the Trump campaign intended to spend $100 million on social media, companies in that area were prepared to assist the campaign in using that money effectively. The Washington Post later wrote that, in light of Trump's narrow electoral margin, Parscale could "justifiably take credit" for his victory.
The database of voter information that drove Parscale's social media advertising campaigns in the 2016 election was dubbed "Project Alamo", a name which eventually encompassed all of the associated fundraising and political advertising efforts.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth (October 2026), in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
