White House press secretary has ties to the Nutmeg State
On her first day on the job, Connecticut native Jennifer Psaki, the new White House press secretary under President Joe Biden, promised a return to the old days, where she will bring “truth and transparency back to the briefing room.”
“There will be times when we see things differently in this room, among all of us,” Psaki, who grew up in Greenwich, told reporters. “That’s OK. That’s part of our democracy. Rebuilding trust with the American people will be central to our focus in the press office and in the White House every single day.”
Under Biden, Psaki leads the first-ever all-female senior communications staff in the White House, a group that includes longtime Biden aide
Kate Bedingfield, former Move On official Karine Jean-Pierre and Pili Tobar, who worked for liberal immigration reform group America’s Voice.
Across multiple roles in government, including stints in the White House and the State Department, Psaki has earned a reputation for being an unflappable straight-shooter — a welcome approach after a succession of combative press secretaries under former President Donald Trump that included Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Stephanie Grisham and Kayleigh McEnany.
During her 30-minute press briefing, Psaki outlined highlights of the 15 executive orders signed by Biden on his first day in office, which included a 100-day masking challenge to combat the coronavirus pandemic, a reversal of Trump’s decision to withdraw from the World Health Organization, extending the pause on student loan payments and interest and rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement.
Psaki’s debut offered a sharp contrast to that of Sean Spicer, Trump’s first press secretary, who spent early briefings in 2017 defending the former president’s inauguration crowd size.
Whenasked by a reporter whether Psaki sees her primary role as promoting Biden’s interests or providing the unvarnished truth, she said she has a “deep respect for the role of a free and independent press in our democracy and for the role all of you [ journalists] play.”
“If the president were standing here with me today, he would say he works for the American people,” Psaki said. “I work for him, so I also work for the American people. But his objective and his commitment is to bring transparency and truth back to government, to share the truth even when it’s hard to hear. And that’s something that I hope to deliver on in this role as well.”
Psaki, 42, grew up in Stamford until seventh grade, when her family moved to Cos Cob and later Old Greenwich. She attended Sacred Heart, Greenwich Country Day School and Greenwich High School, where she graduated in 1996. Her father, James R. Psaki, is a retired real estate developer who now lives in Colorado, and her mother, Eileen D. Medvey, is a psychotherapist.
Adam Rohdie, Head of School at Greenwich Country Day, said he got to know Psaki when he invited her back to campus several years ago to talk to students.
“She’s was super smart young lady,” Rohdie said. “She had a really sort of high character. Country Day as a school spends a lot of time talking about character development, and she certainly represented us in an exquisite way. I think people knew when she was in eighth grade that she had greatness heading her way.”
The captain of her high school swim team and a proficient backstroker, Psaki competed for two years at William & Mary, where she was also a member of the Chi Omega sorority.
Ned Skinner, Psaki’s swim coach at William & Mary before becoming the head coach at Virginia Tech for 20 years, called Psaki a “gritty competitor” and a supportive teammate.
“She was willing to switch over to the thousand meter freestyle, which is a long distance event, to help the team, and she really became one of our top swimmers in that event,” Skinner said. “I remember her saying, ‘Well, I’ll do whatever you say, I just want to make sure that I’m helping,’ whereas some people would just roll their eyes. Jen was like, ‘yeah, let’s go.’ “
Upon graduation, Psaki landed entry-level positions in Washington, D.C. and briefly wound up in Iowa, where she worked on campaigns for former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack and Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin.
Psaki later worked at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, where she met Gregory
Mecher, a former Chief of Staff for Massachusetts Rep. Joe Kennedy III. Psaki and Mecher were married in 2010 and have two children who are now 6 and 3.
After working on Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry’s unsuccessful presidential campaign, Psaki became a traveling press secretary for Barack Obama during his first presidential run, eventually serving as deputy press secretary and deputy communications director during Obama’s first term, where she was a frequent on-air representative.
In 2011, Psaki left for a short stint as Senior Vice President and Managing Director at NewYork-based public affairs firm Global Strategy Group (GSG) in its D.C. office, later returning for Obama’s reelection campaign.
Politico named Psaki one of its 50 politicos to watch in 2012. In 2013, she was named department spokesperson at the U.S. Department of State — a job she mentioned at the press briefing on Wednesday.
“I come to this podium having served both in the White House and at the State Department as the spokesperson there, and I traveled the world on trips to promote democracy, where I saw the power of the United States and, of course, the power of this podium and the power of truth and the importance of setting an example of engagement and transparency,” Psaki said Wednesday.
During the Trump era, Psaki worked as a non-resident scholar at the non-partisan Endowment for International Peace, as a CNN contributor and as a consultant with WestExec Advisors LLC, a firm co-founded by Biden Secretary of State nominee Antony Blinken.
Displaying none of the pugnacious tendencies of her predecessors in the press secretary’s office, Psaki’s debut was characteristic of her reputation as a calm, straight-forward communicator.
“There will be moments when we disagree, and there will certainly be days where we disagree for extensive parts of the briefing,” Psaki told reporters on Wednesday. “But wehave a common goal, which is sharing accurate information with the American people.”
James Psaki, who lives in Snowmass, Colorado, said “pride” was not a big enough word to describe the feeling of watching his daughter on television Wednesday.
“I must have gotten, I don’t know, 20, 30, 40 calls from our friends in Connecticut, text messages, emails,” Psaki said. “She can multitask better than anybody I know, and she’s fearless. Some people could never get before the news and really be able to be comfortable about it. If you watch her, she’s very comfortable. She’s got a sense of humor and she knows how to handle these people. She’s just totally competent and secure in her own skin.”
Jennifer, James said, was asked by the Biden team in August after the convention if she could come and run the War Room during the transition, which involved terminating her contract with CNN and severing other consulting relationships to avoid conflicts of interest.
The understanding, James said, was that if Biden won the election, Jennifer would continue to help until the inauguration, but wouldn’t stay on longer than that.
“She really did not want to do another tour in the West Wing, because as you can imagine, the West Wing is not nine to five,” James Psaki said. “It’s 24/7. With two small children, it’s difficult.”
A week before Jennifer’s birthday on Dec. 1, James Psaki said she told him about being asked to stay on as press secretary. “Pressure is probably too strong a word from the Biden team,” he said, “but [Biden] really wanted to hit the ground running, because he knows it’s going to be very challenging and difficult.”