Elise Viebeck grew up in the small Bay Area town of Pleasanton, California. Now, she divides her time between Southern California, where she attends Claremont McKenna College, and Washington, D.C.

Elise's fascination with Washington began in high school. As a floor page in the House of Representatives, she witnessed the range of Congressional activity: from the reauthorization of the Patriot Act, to the vote on CAFTA, to the beginnings of the Mark Foley scandal. Though not the rosiest introduction to politics, her term left her unscathed and ever more engrossed. Since then, she has returned to the city to work at the Independent Women's Forum and presently, at National Review.

Elise chose Claremont McKenna College for its outstanding program in government and its promise that she could devote time to things not at all related to school. In this vein she recently completed her term as Editor-in-Chief of the Claremont Independent, the conservative campus news magazine. One of her recent pieces looked at a CMC professor's missteps in the world of Nazi art restitution, and garnered a recent citation in the Los Angeles Times and the Eric Breindel Award for Journalism.