Victoria Coates was a blogger before becoming an advisor to Sec Rumsfeld.
What the hell? How does that work?
In the 2000s, she blogged mainly about foreign policy under the pen name "AcademicElephant" at the Conservative blog RedState.[4] Her blog posts were read by aides of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who later recruited Coates to work as an advisor for his book, Known and Unknown: A Memoir, published in 2011.[4]
Coates served as an advisor to former Texas governor Rick Perry during his 2012 presidential bid before she became an advisor to Ted Cruz in 2013 and his leading national security advisor during his 2016 presidential campaign.[4]
Her book David's Sling: A History of Democracy in Ten Works of Art was published early in 2016. The book covers ten European artists and their major works, including Michelangelo (David), Jacques-Louis David (The Death of Marat), and Picasso (Guernica).[5]
She lives in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia with her husband and two children.[4]