Peggy Noonan was a Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan from 1984 to 1986; in 1988 she was chief speechwriter to Vice President George Bush during his first campaign for the presidency. In 1989 she left Washington for her native New York, where she completed her first book, the bestseller “What I Saw at the Revolution – A Political Life in the Reagan Years” (Random House, 1990). Since that time her journalism and essays have appeared in Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Harpers, Forbes, Mirabella, Harpers Bazaar, and The Washington Monthly. She has recently published her second book, “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Noonan was a member of the President’s Commission on International Broadcasting, 1990-’91, and co-wrote the Commission report recommending the creation of Radio Free China. She is co-chair of the Public Broadcasting System’s Project Democracy, and a member of the board of Freedom House.

Before entering the Reagan White House she was a producer at CBS News in New York. She wrote and produced Dan Rather’s daily radio commentary from 1981 to 1984; she also wrote television news specials for CBS News. From 1978 to 19881 she was a writer/producer at the CBS Radio Network, producing radio hourly news broadcasts and the networks weekly “World of Religion.”

From 1975 to 1978 she wrote and broadcast the editorials and public affairs documentaries of WEEI-AM, then the all-news CBS radio station in Boston, Massachusetts. Her editorials and documentaries won a number of regional journalism awards.

In 1974 Noonan graduated cum laude from Fairleigh Dickinson University, where she was editor of the undergraduate newspaper, The Spectator. She was born in Brooklyn, New York, and grew up on Long Island and in New Jersey. She lives in NYC with her 7-year-old son.