About Kristen
Kristen Soltis is the director of policy research at The Winston Group, a DC-based polling and consulting firm. She is also a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum. She is the co-host of Bloggingheads.tv’s show “The Week in Blog” and of Variety’s “Wilshire and Washington” weekly podcast.
Kristen has appeared on MSNBC, Fox Business, CNN International, PBS, NPR, and on numerous international TV and radio programs. Her writing has appeared in-print in papers such as POLITICO and The Orlando Sentinel and her blogging has been featured New York Times’ “Room for Debate,” National Review’s “The Corner,” and USNews.com’s “Debate Club.” She is a regular contributor to Huffington Post Pollster (formerly Pollster.com).
Kristen is also the author of a chapter in the forthcoming political science text Margin of Victory and has co-authored a paper on campaign finance published in the peer-reviewed journal American Politics Research. She has been a panelist for think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute and at conferences such as Digital Capital Week and CampaignTech.
Kristen was profiled as a “Mover & Shaker” by Campaigns & Elections magazine in 2010 and was named to the inaugural class of the Foreign Policy Initiative’s “Future Leaders” program. She currently serves on the board of the America’s Future Foundation and serves in a volunteer leadership role in the Junior League of Washington.
She received her Master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University and her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida. Her Master’s thesis about young voters and the Republican Party was awarded “Best Thesis” honors. She is also a graduate of the Women’s Campaign School at Yale University.
(And then there’s the fun stuff.)
Kristen was born and raised in Orlando, FL and is a proud Florida Gator graduate with an affinity for warm weather, theme parks, and meteorology. (During summers in high school, she was the actress that drove the tram on the King Kong ride at Universal Studios.) Politics was always an interest, and in high school she spent her days on the debate team, eventually winning the national Congress Tournament of Champions.
In 2002 she was appointed by Governor Jeb Bush to his Florida Commemorative Quarter Committee and helped decide what design would appear on the Sunshine State’s edition of the Mint’s 50 States collection. She was also elected Governor of Florida Girls State and attended Girls Nation.
From 2007 to 2009, Kristen lived out her dream of being a rockstar as the lead singer of DC’s rock/pop band “The Frustrations.”
She currently serves on the Board of Directors for the America’s Future Foundation and is vice chair of Strategic Planning for the Junior League of Washington.
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