Giving Parents a Voice Townhall

A trailblazer in Virginia politics, Winsome Earle-Sears was born in Kingston, Jamaica, and grew

up in New York. In 1983 she joined the United States Marine Corps and was the only woman in

her engineering class. Rising to the rank of corporal, Earle-Sears also became an American

citizen. She credits the Marine Corps with instilling the self-discipline and leadership that shapes

her today.

Earle-Sears settled in the Norfolk area and continued serving her community through her work

in directing a women's homeless shelter and leading a men’s prison ministry. She earned a

bachelor’s degree in English from Old Dominion University (1992) and a master's degree in

organizational leadership from Regent University (2003). In 2001 she won election to a single

two-year term representing a district comprising the cities of Chesapeake, Norfolk and Virginia

Beach in the House of Delegates. Earle-Sears served on the Advisory Committee on Women

Veterans for the Department of Veterans Affairs. An advocate for the power of education to

improve lives, she was appointed to the State Board of Education in 2011, and was elected its

vice president in 2014.

Winning election in 2021, Earle-Sears became the first woman elected lieutenant governor and

the first Black woman and female veteran to hold statewide office in Virginia.

Earle-Sears is a mother, grandmother, and wife, and lives in Winchester, VA with her husband

Terry.

Katie Gorka was director of The Feulner Institute’s Center for Civil Society and the American Dialogue at the Heritage Foundation from 2020 to 2022. In 2016, Katie joined the Trump Transition Team and then served as a senior advisor in the Office of Policy at the Department of Homeland Security from 2017 to 2019, where she focused on strategies for prevention of terrorism and targeted violence and combatting use of the internet for terrorism and human trafficking. From June to August 2019, she served as the press secretary for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

As President of the Threat Knowledge Group from 2014 to 2017, Katie provided expertise and training on irregular warfare and terrorism to the FBI, US Army Special Forces, Marine Corps, and law enforcement. From 2009 to 2014, was the Executive Director of the Westminster Institute, which conducted research and education on threats posed by extremist ideologies.

Katie was born in Boston and grew up in various places on the East Coast, from Franconia, New Hampshire, to Asheville, North Carolina. She earned her B.A. in Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her M.Sc. in Politics of the World Economy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She lived in Budapest, Hungary for twelve years, where she worked on aspects of the post-communist transition, including projects to help rebuild civil society.