Donna Brazile: Compromise Is the Way to Success

Donna Brazile

Veteran political strategist Donna Brazile is vice chair of Voter Registration and Participation at the Democratic National Committee and former chair of the DNC’s Voting Rights Institute. She also served for a brief time earlier in 2011 as acting chairwoman of the DNC. She is a former member of the board of directors of the Louisiana Recovery Authority, responsible for leading the state’s rebuilding process in the aftermath of two catastrophic hurricanes.

A New Orleans native, Brazile began her political career at 9, when she worked to elect a City Council candidate who had promised to build a playground in her neighborhood. The candidate won, the swing sets were installed and a lifelong passion for political progress was ignited. Four decades later, Brazile has worked on every presidential campaign from 1976 through 2000, when she served as campaign manager for former Vice President Al Gore, becoming the first African-American woman to manage a presidential campaign.

Brazile is author of the best-selling memoir Cooking with Grease: Stirring the Pots in American Politics, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, a syndicated newspaper columnist for United Media, a columnist for Ms. Magazine, and O, The Oprah Magazine, and an on-air contributor to CNN and ABC, where she regularly appears on “This Week with Christiane Amanpour.”

In August 2009, O, The Oprah Magazine, chose Brazile as one of its 20 “remarkable visionaries” for the magazine’s first-ever O Power List. In addition, she was named among the 100 Most Powerful Women by Washingtonian magazine and the Top 50 Women in America by Essence magazine, and received the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s highest award for political achievement. Brazile is founder and managing director of Brazile & Associates LLC, a general consulting, grassroots advocacy and training firm based in Washington, D.C.