Background and career
Kellyanne Elizabeth Conway (née Fitzpatrick; born January 20, 1967) is an American political consultant and pollster who served as senior counselor to the president in the first presidency of Donald Trump from 2017 to 2020. She was previously Trump's campaign manager, having been appointed in August 2016; Conway is the first woman to have run a successful U.S. presidential campaign. She previously held roles as a campaign manager and strategist in the Republican Party and was formerly president and CEO of the Polling Company/WomanTrend. In the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries, Conway endorsed Ted Cruz and chaired a pro-Cruz political action committee until Cruz later dropped out of the race. In July 2016, after Cruz dropped out the race, Trump appointed Conway as a senior advisor and later campaign manager. On December 22, 2016, Trump announced that Conway would join his administration as counselor to the president. On November 29, 2017, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that Conway would oversee White House efforts to combat the opioid overdose epidemic. In Conway's role as senior counselor to the president, she used the phrase "alternative facts" to describe fictitious attendance numbers for Trump's inauguration. In 2017, members of Congress from both parties called for an investigation of an alleged ethics violation after she publicly endorsed commercial products associated with the president's daughter, Ivanka Trump. In June 2019, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel recommended that Conway be fired for "unprecedented" multiple violations of the Hatch Act of 1939, but she was not fired. In August 2020, Conway left the administration. Conway is a frequent media commentator. In 2022, she joined Fox News as a contributor, and she appears as a guest or host on a variety of programs, including Hannity, The Five, Outnumbered, The Big Weekend Show, and others. She also contributed to Fox's 2022 midterm election coverage. In July 2024, Fox News announced that Conway would begin to host a weekly program on the network's streaming platform, Fox Nation, called Here's The Deal with Kellyanne Conway.
Kellyanne Elizabeth Fitzpatrick was born on January 20, 1967, in Camden, New Jersey, to Diane (née DiNatale) and John Fitzpatrick, and grew up in the nearby Atco section of Waterford Township, New Jersey. Conway's father had German, English, and Irish ancestry, while her mother is of Italian descent; John Fitzpatrick owned a small trucking company, and Diane worked at a bank. Conway's parents divorced when she was three, and she was raised by her mother, grandmother, and two unmarried aunts in Atco. She graduated from St. Joseph High School in 1985 as class valedictorian. In high school, she also sang in the choir, played field hockey, worked on floats for parades, and was a cheerleader. A 1992 New Jersey Organized Crime Commission report identified Conway's grandfather, Jimmy "The Brute" DiNatale, as a mob associate of the Philadelphia crime family; DiNatale did not reside with Conway's grandmother, Conway, and the rest of her family. Conway's cousin, Mark DeMarco, has stated that while in high school, Conway ordered members of the football team to stop bullying him; according to DeMarco, the bullying stopped. Her family is Catholic. Conway credits her experience working for eight summers on a blueberry farm in Hammonton, New Jersey, for teaching her a strong work ethic. "The faster you went, the more money you'd make," she said. At age 16, she won the New Jersey Blueberry Princess pageant. At age 20, she won the World Champion Blueberry Packing competition. "Everything I learned about life and business started on that farm," she said in September 2016. Conway attended Trinity College, Washington, D.C., now Trinity Washington University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in political science. In 1992, she earned a Juris Doctor with honors from the George Washington University Law School.
After graduation, she served as a judicial clerk for Judge Richard A. Levie of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.
Conway entered the polling business when she was in law school, working as a research assistant for Wirthlin Group, a Republican polling firm. After graduating, she initially considered working for a law firm, but chose to work for Luntz Research Companies instead. As a student at Trinity College, she met and became friends with Frank Luntz, the firm's founder, on a year abroad at Oxford University. In 1995, she founded her own firm, the Polling Company, which consulted on consumer trends, including trends regarding women. Conway's clients included Vaseline, American Express, and Hasbro. She also provided political consulting service to U.S. representative Jack Kemp, U.S. Senator Fred Thompson, Vice President Dan Quayle, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and U.S. representative (later Vice President) Mike Pence. She worked as the senior advisor to Gingrich during his unsuccessful 2012 United States presidential election campaign. Later, in 2012, she represented U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin. She also directed demographic and attitudinal survey projects for trade associations and private companies, including American Express, ABC News, Major League Baseball, and Ladies Home Journal. Her firm also included WomanTrend, a research and consulting division.
In the 1990s, along with conservative female commentators Laura Ingraham, Barbara Olson, and Ann Coulter, she helped turn punditry into "stylish stardom" in both Washington, D.C. and cable television. and was credited with setting forth Washington, D.C.'s "sexual awakening." In a review of the era in the capital, Conway (then known as Fitzpatrick) said that her "broad mind and small waist have not switched places". Conway, Ingraham, and Coulter were sometimes called "pundettes", and appeared on Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect.
Conway appeared as a commentator on polling and politics for ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, NY1, Fox News, and various radio programs. In 2004, The Washington Post recognized her with its "Crystal Ball" award for accurately predicting the outcome of that year's election.
