This month, IWF is happy to welcome a new visiting fellow to our team, Samantha Dravis. She is currently the Senior Vice President at Clout Public Affairs and has valuable experience as a policy advisor and strategist in a variety of positions in Washington, D.C.

Samantha will be working on Energy and Innovation issues lending her valuable expertise from her experience at the EPA. She also has experience in the legal sector and will be working with the Independent Women’s Law Center. Prior to her work at EPA, Samantha served as the President of the Rule of Law Defense Fund, General Counsel of the Republican Attorneys General Association and as an attorney on Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign for the presidency. 

Meet Ms. Dravis below: 

Samantha Dravis is currently Senior Vice President at Clout Public Affairs in Washington, DC. She is a policy advisor and strategist who has experience working at the White House, a federal agency, Capitol Hill, and for some of the country’s most influential political and public policy organizations.

Before her current role, Dravis served as Associate Administrator at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President Trump, where she was responsible for leading policy for the agency’s regulatory and permitting programs and providing analysis and oversight of all the agency’s major regulatory actions. Samantha also served as EPA’s Regulatory Reform Officer, leading the agency’s response to President Trump’s Executive Order 13771 and spearheading a major effort that resulted in 22 deregulatory actions during the first year of the Trump Administration. Samantha also led the process of EPA’s coordination with the White House, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) as well as all other federal agencies. 

Prior to her work at EPA, Samantha served as President of the Rule of Law Defense Fund and General Counsel of the Republican Attorneys General Association, where she advanced policy issues important to the Republican attorneys general on the national stage; this included coordinating support for various amicus briefs, providing research and briefings for state attorney generals and their staffs; and organizing major policy conferences on issues like healthcare, state and federal environmental regulation, and financial services rules.

Prior to heading the Rule of Law Defense Fund, Samantha worked as an attorney on Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign for the presidency, and as the Associate Director of Political Affairs at The White House during the administration of President George W. Bush, and as legal counsel for Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, an organization dedicated to promoting the benefits of free markets and a free society. 

Samantha attended the University of Notre Dame Law School, receiving several merit scholarships. She served as the Solicitation Editor of the Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics, and Public Policy and graduated cum laude.

We’re looking forward to working with Samantha and having her on our team.