Carrie Wofford brings two decades of significant policy and political experience from the White House, executive branch agencies, and senior Capitol Hill posts.
Prior to founding Veterans Education Success in January, 2013, Wofford served Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) on the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions (HELP) as the Senior Committee Counsel across the Committee’s issues, where she was described by The National Journal as someone who “wins high marks.”
Wofford was awarded the 2012 Freedom Award, the 2012 Congressional Staffer of the Year Award, and the 2012 Legislative Proponent Award for her work
building a coalition of allies on and off Capitol Hill to protect veterans and servicemembers from abuse by predatory for-profit colleges. Wofford was noted for proposing and helping secure an Executive Order by President Obama and for working with the nation’s top veterans’ leaders to enlist multiple bills from numerous Members of Congress, with a successful bipartisan bill sent to the President at the end of 2012.
Wofford’s other major work on the HELP Committee centered on working with a team of top staff and outside allies to draw attention to the dwindling Middle Class and to develop and build support for a proposal to rebuild the Middle Class.
Prior to her tenure on the HELP Committee, Wofford served the Senate Democratic Leadership team – led by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) with Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL), Byron Dorgan (D-ND), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI). As Director of New Policy, Wofford ran an in-house think tank for Democratic Senators, proposing new policy solutions and bringing new polling and thought leaders into the Senate for regular briefings. She also helped craft and convene presentations for Democratic Senators at their annual retreat, for Democratic Senate Chiefs of Staff at their weekly meetings, and for senior Democratic Senate staff, and served on the Senate leadership messaging team, proposing and creating message documents.
During the Clinton Administration, Wofford held a number of significant White House and agency posts, where she was able to develop policy, organize public engagement campaigns, and create numerous successful message events for the President, First Lady, Vice President, Mrs. Gore, and Labor Secretary Bob Reich.
One of Wofford’s public engagement campaigns for the Clinton White House was picked up and replicated by the Obama White House, with Wofford’s assistance.
Wofford’s campaign experience includes dozens of statewide and national campaigns, starting in 1990 with North Carolina Democratic Senate nominee Harvey Gantt’s first attempt to unseat Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC), and continuing on the 1992 Clinton/Gore campaign and 1996 Clinton/Gore re-elect, as well as a number of U.S. Senate and House races by Wofford family members – former Senator Harris Wofford (D-PA) and Congressional candidate Dan Wofford – in Pennsylvania.
Educated at Bryn Mawr College and Yale Law School, Wofford practiced law for seven years – clerking on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and serving as a Senior Associate at WilmerHale LLP, where she helped supervise large investigations into managed earnings cases, worked on appellate teams writing appellate briefs, and authored several volumes on Sarbanes-Oxley Whistleblower law for the ABA’s Treatise, The Practitioner’s Guide to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.