Dana Perino on the Stock Market, Obama, Bush, and Africa (2009)

• published: 19 Mar 2015
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Dana Marie Perino (born May 9, 1972) was the 27th White House Press Secretary, serving under President George W. Bush from September 14, 2007 to January 20, 2009. She was the second female White House Press Secretary, after Dee Dee Myers who served during the Clinton Administration. She is currently a political commentator for Fox News, while also serving as a co-host of the network's talk show The Five, and is a book publishing executive at Random House. Perino was born in Evanston, Wyoming, the daughter of Janice "Jan" and Leo Perino,[3] and grew up in Denver, Colorado.[4] Two of her paternal great-grandparents were Italian immigrants.[5][6][7] She attended Ponderosa High School in Parker, Colorado, a suburb of Denver.[4] Perino graduated from Colorado State University-Pueblo (CSU-Pueblo) in 1993 with a bachelor's degree in mass communications and minors in both political science and Spanish.[2] While attending CSU-Pueblo, she was on the forensics team. She also worked at KTSC-TV, the campus-based Rocky Mountain PBS affiliate,[8] where she served as host of Capitol Journal, a weekly summary of Colorado politics, and produced Standoff, a weekly public affairs program.[citation needed] While at college, she also worked at KCCY-FM on the 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. shift.[9] Perino went on to obtain a masters degree in public affairs reporting from the University of Illinois Springfield (UIS).[10] During her time at UIS, she also worked for WCIA, a CBS affiliate, as a daily reporter covering the Illinois Capitol.[11] Perino next worked in Washington, D.C., for Rep. Scott McInnis (R-CO) of Colorado as a staff assistant before serving nearly four years as the press secretary for Rep. Dan Schaefer (R-CO), who then chaired the House Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power.[8][12] After Rep. Schaefer announced his retirement in 1998, Perino and husband Peter McMahon moved to Britain.[4] After a year there, Perino and McMahon moved back to the United States and resided in San Diego, California, for three years. During that time, Perino worked in the field of high-tech public affairs.[citation needed] In November 2001, Perino returned to Washington, D.C., and secured a position as a spokesperson for the Department of Justice,[13] at which she served for two years.[14] Perino then joined the White House staff as the associate director of communications for the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), where she provided strategic advice on message development, media relations and public outreach.[15][16] The House Oversight Committee, chaired by Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-NY), claimed in its findings on climate change censorship, that the CEQ exerted undue control of media relations in governmental scientific agencies during her tenure.[17] Science writer Mark Bowen incorrectly claimed that Perino directed other public affairs officers to kill press releases about the danger of hydrogen fuel cells after President George W. Bush announced his support for them.[18] Since leaving the White House, Perino became a political commentator on Fox News. She is a regular co-host on the talk show, The Five. In November 2009, she was nominated by President Barack Obama to serve on the Broadcasting Board of Governors, an agency overseeing government-sponsored international broadcasting,[26] and was confirmed by the Senate on June 30, 2010.[27] In 2010, she started teaching a class in political communications part-time at George Washington University's Graduate School of Political Management.[28] In March 2011 the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., announced that Perino had joined its books imprint Crown Forum as Editorial Director but she has since left this position. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana_Perino