Leslie Shedd has served as a senior advisor to Members of Congress, to U.S. Senate and U.S. Presidential candidates, and to top trade associations for more than 15 years. Most recently, Shedd served as the communications director and senior advisor for the House Foreign Affairs Committee as well as the deputy chief of staff for communications to Chairman Michael McCaul’s (R-TX) personal office. In those roles, she managed the communications strategy for both the committee and the chairman’s personal office, advising the chairman on domestic issues and foreign policy.
Prior to her time with the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Chairman McCaul, Shedd served as the communications director for then-Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) and Rep. Frank Lucas, the former chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee and the House Agriculture Committee, as well as a communications staffer in other congressional offices. Shedd also has extensive experience on campaigns, serving as the national press secretary for Carly Fiorina’s presidential campaign in 2016, the deputy campaign manager and senior communications advisor for the 2018 U.S. Senate campaign in Ohio, and the campaign manager and communications director for the 2016 U.S. Senate campaign in Maryland, among others. She has also worked in the private sector as the Vice President of Communications at the National Restaurant Association and a Senior Vice President at Firehouse Strategies, a public relations firm, where she worked with some of the largest and most well-known companies in the world.
Shedd earned her law degree from the University of the District of Columbia and her undergraduate degree from Clemson University. She is an alumnus of the Wilson Center Foreign Policy Fellowship Program, the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Congressional Fellowship, and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy’s Media Fellowship Program. She currently serves as a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council.
