THE NEW YORK TIMES – President-elect Donald J. Trump rounded out his cabinet selections on Saturday, picking Brooke Rollins as his agriculture secretary.
A lawyer from Texas, Ms. Rollins, 52, served in the White House during Mr. Trump’s first term and has spent more than two decades promoting conservative policies as the leader of influential think tanks.
Here’s what to know about her.
She is a veteran of Texas’ conservative movement.
Ms. Rollins’s conservative bona fides run deep. A 2012 profile of Ms. Rollins — who grew up in Glen Rose, Texas, southwest of Fort Worth, and participated in the youth agriculture programs FFA and Four-H — noted that her “commitment to conservative principles began when she was 8 years old, watching, transfixed, as Ronald Reagan took the oath of office in 1980.”
Ms. Rollins graduated from Texas A&M University and worked for Gov. Rick Perry, according to a biography from the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank. She joined the think tank in 2003 as its president and chief executive, leading it for 15 years.
During her tenure at the think tank, she wrote opinion columns decrying “free-spending lawmakers and irresponsible choices,” urging the state to resist federal overreach and expressing support for school choice.
She played a role in the Trump administration’s criminal justice reform efforts.
In 2018, Ms. Rollins joined the White House as assistant to the president in the Office of American Innovation. Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, who was senior adviser at the time, said upon her selection that he had worked closely with Ms. Rollins on prison reform …
The Honorable Brooke L. Rollins
America First Policy Institute – Brooke Leslie Rollins is originally from Glen Rose, Texas, and serves as the President and Chief Executive Officer of AFPI. Rollins was formerly Director of the Domestic Policy Council and Assistant to the President for Strategic Initiatives in the White House under President Donald Trump, where she also previously served as Director of the Office of American Innovation.
In these roles, she developed and managed the transformational domestic policy agenda of the Trump Administration, leading to historic achievements for the American people. Rollins graduated with honors from Texas A&M University with a degree in agricultural development and was the first female to be elected student body president.
After earning her Juris Doctor with honors at the University of Texas School of Law, she served as Governor Rick Perry’s policy director before running the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) for 15 years.
At TPPF, Rollins elevated a small policy organization to a national force and redefined the possibilities for a state-based think tank — setting the model and aspiration for AFPI. Rollins and her husband, Mark, currently reside in Fort Worth, Texas, and spend a large majority of their free time taxiing their four very active children to baseball games, cattle shows, piano lessons, and Aggie football games.
