Stephanie Grisham

Stephanie Ann Grisham (née Sommerville; born July 23, 1976) is an American former White House official who was the 32nd White House press secretary and served as White House communications director from July 2019 to April 2020. She was chief of staff and press secretary for the first lady of the United States, Melania Trump, from 2020 to 2021, after previously serving as her press secretary from 2017 to 2019.

Grisham was a press aide to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, and then a member of the presidential transition team. She was Trump's third White House press secretary, succeeding Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and was the first White House press secretary to hold no press conferences, instead opting for interviews on conservative news outlets. Grisham assumed the role of chief of staff to the first lady on April 7, 2020.

Grisham resigned on January 6, 2021, in the hours immediately after the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol. She has since become a critic of Trump. In September 2021, she announced the publication of her book about her time working in the Trump administration, I'll Take Your Questions Now.

Early life

Stephanie Ann Sommerville was born in Colorado to Robert Leo Sommerville and Elizabeth Ann Calkins. Her parents divorced, and her mother remarried, first to Dave Allen, with whom she had another daughter, and then to Roger Schroder. Grisham came from a farming family. She moved with her mother to East Wenatchee, Washington, where she graduated from Eastmont High School in 1994. Her mother has since moved to Nebraska, where she is known as Ann Schroder.

According to the Arizona secretary of state's office, Grisham began voting in Arizona as a registered Democrat in 1997. She became a Republican after 2007.