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Victoria C. Gardner Coates is an American art historian, blogger and political consultant, mainly in foreign policy. She served as national security advisor to Ted Cruz in his 2016 presidential campaign.
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Early life and education
Coates's birth and upbringing were in Lancaster, Pennsylvania where her father started an investment firm which her mother also is involved in. On her maternal side, she is a descendant of Andrew Gregg Curtin who served as Governor of Pennsylvania during the Civil War.
After taking an undergraduate degree at Trinity College, Connecticut she obtained a master's degree in art history from Williams College and a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, where she wrote a thesis on Camillo Massimo. She later taught at the University as an occasional adjunct instructor.
Career
In the 2000s, she blogged mainly about foreign policy under the pen name "AcademicElephant" at the Conservative blog portal RedState. Her blog posts were read by aides of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and after Rumsfeld left office she started working for him, being an advisor for the book Known and Unknown: A Memoir, published in 2011.
Her career continued 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.
Her book David's Sling: A History of Democracy in Ten Works of Art was published early in 2016. The book covers 10 European artists and one of their main works. Among those included are Michelangelo (David), Jacques-Louis David (The Death of Marat), and Picasso (Guernica).
She lives in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia with her husband and two children.