Stephanie Grisham Bio
Stephanie Ann Grisham is an American former White House official and political aide who served inside the Trump administration in several high-profile communications roles. She was the 32nd White House press secretary and the White House communications director from July 2019 to April 2020, and she later returned to the East Wing as chief of staff and press secretary to First Lady Melania Trump. Grisham resigned on January 6, 2021, in the hours after the storming of the United States Capitol, and she has since become a prominent critic of Donald Trump. A registered Republican since 2007, she previously identified as a Democrat from 1997 to 2007.
Early Life and Background
Stephanie Ann Sommerville was born on July 23, 1976, in Colorado, to Robert Leo Sommerville and Elizabeth Ann Calkins. Her parents divorced when she was young, and her mother later remarried, first to Dave Allen, with whom she had another daughter, and then to Roger Schroder. She grew up in a farming family and later moved with her mother to East Wenatchee, Washington, where she graduated from Eastmont High School in 1994. Her mother has since settled in Nebraska, where she is known as Ann Schroder.
Grisham attended Mesa State College in Grand Junction, Colorado, where she met her first husband, and she later enrolled at Colorado Mesa University without completing a degree. According to the Arizona secretary of state’s office, she began voting in Arizona as a registered Democrat in 1997 and changed her party affiliation to Republican after 2007. Her political identity, however, would later shift again after she left the Trump White House.
Path to US Politics
Before entering political work, Grisham spent several years in communications and media roles in Arizona. She was the spokeswoman for AAA Arizona in 2007 but was fired within a year after being accused of falsifying expense reports. She was later dismissed from the ad agency Mindspace over plagiarism charges after copying AAA material verbatim into a client’s web page. From 2008 to 2010, she served as a spokeswoman for the Arizona Charter Schools Association, where she met Tom Horne, then Arizona’s superintendent of public schools.
Grisham worked as a spokeswoman for Tom Horne from about 2011 to 2014, after he was elected Arizona attorney general, and she witnessed the 2014 execution of Joseph Wood, describing the two-hour procedure as peaceful, contrary to multiple witness reports. After Republican Mark Brnovich defeated Horne in the 2014 primary, Grisham became a spokesperson for the Arizona House of Representatives Republican caucus. She also worked on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign and, in September 2015, served as a press coordinator for Pope Francis’s visit to Philadelphia as an independent contractor. In 2019–2020, she dated then-Trump White House aide Max Miller.
Stephanie Grisham Career
Early Career (2007–2014)
Grisham’s early communications career in Arizona was marked by rapid advancement and notable controversy. After her dismissal from AAA Arizona and Mindspace, she rebuilt her professional reputation through work with the Arizona Charter Schools Association and the Arizona Attorney General’s Office. Her tenure under Tom Horne included the 2014 execution observation that drew national attention.
Transitioning to legislative work, she served as a spokesperson for the Arizona House Republican caucus and became a central figure in a dispute with the Arizona Capitol Times. Grisham revoked the paper’s press credentials after it reported that House Speaker David Gowan had traveled at taxpayer expense during his congressional campaign, and she required all reporters to undergo criminal background checks to obtain press credentials. Reporters refused to comply, and Gowan ultimately rescinded the order.
Trump Campaign and Transition Breakthrough (2015–2017)
Around August 2015, Grisham joined Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign as a press aide. She helped arrange campaign stops in Phoenix and across the country, a role that quickly expanded to include rallies around the United States. She took an unpaid leave from the Arizona House of Representatives in May 2016 to focus on the campaign full-time.
After Trump’s victory, she was named a special adviser for operations and earned a place on the Trump transition team. During this period, Arizona House Speaker David Gowan paid her roughly $19,000 in state salary over an eight-week span, drawing public scrutiny. Following Trump’s January 2017 inauguration, Grisham was named deputy press secretary for Sean Spicer in the West Wing of the White House, launching her national political career.
White House Press Secretary Era (2019–2020)
In June 2019, First Lady Melania Trump announced via Twitter that Grisham would replace Sarah Huckabee Sanders as White House press secretary and communications director. Grisham took office in July 2019 and became the first White House press secretary in modern history to hold no formal press briefings, instead opting for interviews on conservative news outlets. Her annual salary was reported as $183,000, and she continued a stretch of more than a year without daily press briefings.
Her tenure drew sharp criticism from media figures and former press secretaries. Anderson Cooper 360° devoted two prime-time segments in one week to question whether taxpayers should fund her salary, and authors Don Winslow and Stephen King each pledged $100,000 to charity if she held a one-hour press briefing. On April 7, 2020, Grisham left the podium to return to the East Wing as Melania Trump’s chief of staff, a role she had held in an earlier form from 2017 to 2019.
Notable Events and Milestones
Grisham’s White House tenure was defined by her unusual decision to forgo daily press briefings, her defense of President Trump’s most combative rhetoric, and her testimony about the January 6 Capitol attack. The United States Office of Special Counsel found that she violated the Hatch Act over a 2018 social media post. She resigned on the evening of January 6, 2021, and later testified twice to the January 6 Committee, including on January 5, 2022, and May 18, 2022, sharing details about text messages with Melania Trump regarding the violence.
Stephanie Grisham Family
Family Background and Personal Life
Grisham was born to Robert Leo Sommerville and Elizabeth Ann Calkins, whose marriage ended in divorce during her childhood. She has a half-sister from her mother’s marriage to Dave Allen. After marrying three times and building a family in Arizona, she raised two sons, including Jake, her younger son born on December 25, 2007.
Her first marriage to Danny Don Marries in 1997 ended in divorce in 2004, and she married sportscaster Todd Grisham later that same year, divorcing in 2006. After leaving the Trump White House, she became an outspoken critic of the former president and, in September 2021, announced her memoir, I’ll Take Your Questions Now. On August 20, 2024, she addressed the 2024 Democratic National Convention, describing Trump in strongly personal terms and recounting her experience during the Capitol riot.