“Tough, smart, innovative, and universally admired and respected” is how the 2024 president-elect and former President Donald Trump described his campaign manager and now Chief of Staff appointee Susan Summerall Wiles, more commonly known as Susie Wiles. Along with Chris LaCivita, an experienced Republican political strategist, Ms. Wiles ran one of the most successful, disciplined and effective electoral campaigns of Mr. Trump than the ones he led in 2016 and 2020.

The 67-year-old political lobbyist, considered quiet and unassuming, is feared and respected within and outside the party. Quite contrarily to other people close to Mr. Trump, the U.S’s first female Chief of Staff keeps away from the limelight and prefers to ‘work in the background’.

Her demeanour has earned her the epithet of ‘Ice Maiden’, a title even Mr. Trump used during his victory speech while congratulating her on her work on the presidential campaign.

Seasoned strategist

Ms. Wiles is a seasoned political strategist with her first major stint in electoral politics being with Ronald Reagan for his 1980 presidential bid.

Since then, Ms. Wiles has worked in the electoral campaigns of a wide range of Republican candidates — from moderate candidates such as former U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman Jr. (who criticised Mr. Trump after the capitol siege in 2021) to current Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Early beginnings

Ms. Wiles met Mr. Trump in 2015 and became his campaign manager for the State of Florida during his 2016 presidential run. Following her success there, Ms. Wiles also headed the successful gubernatorial campaign of Mr. DeSantis to Florida in 2018.

However, a falling out between the Governor and Ms. Wiles led to him dismissing her when he assumed power and actively sabotaging her relationship with Mr. Trump who then dropped Ms. Wiles from his campaign during his 2020 presidential run.

Ms. Wiles later used her knowledge of working with the Governor against him when he ran against Mr. Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination for President.

Her successful strategy for Mr. Trump made Mr. DeSantis look out of touch and lacking personal charisma.

Rocky road ahead

The Chief of Staff of the White House is the head of the U.S. President’s Executive Office. They act as the President’s confidante, advising him on key policy matters while also overseeing staff appointments to the executive office, directing and managing the flow of information between different offices of the President, and most importantly regulating access to the President (that is, deciding on who is or is not allowed an audience with the U.S. President).

Ms. Wiles apparently was very keen on the last point. According to CNN, she had told Mr. Trump that she would only take on the role if she was given power to control access to him in the Oval Office.

Being the Chief of Staff, Ms. Wiles will have her work cut out. Between 2017 and 2021, President Trump went through four different Chiefs of Staff. His brazen, crude and unpredictable nature has made him difficult to work with. Moreover, his refusal to be ‘controlled’, or worse, reprimanded has led to sour relations with a lot of his staff over the years such as his former political strategist Steve Bannon and former communications head Anthony Scaramucci.

Out of his Chiefs of Staff, his second appointee in 2017, John Kelly has been one of his most vocal critics. Mr. Kelly, who had a military background and was seen as politically neutral, was brought in to bring more order to a very chaotic President’s office in 2017.

However, Mr. Trump’s aversion to the restrictions Mr. Kelly put on his office brought things to a head and he left the position after almost a year-and-a-half. He has since gone on record to state that “Mr. Trump met the definition of a fascist, would govern like a dictator if allowed, and had no understanding of the Constitution or the concept of rule of law.”

However, Susie Wiles, whose father is Pat Summerall, an NFL player and later sports broadcaster, has worked with Mr. Trump since 2016 and is yet to fall out of favour with him. Her steely disposition has earned her the former President’s trust.

But while she is a seasoned lobbyist, her lack of experience holding government office might work against her. It remains to be seen whether Ms. Wiles will be the one who can finally ‘tame the shrew’.

With her selection as President-elect Donald Trump ‘s incoming White House chief of staff, veteran Florida political strategist Susie Wiles moves from a largely behind-the-scenes role of campaign co-chair to the high-profile position of the president’s closest adviser and counsel.

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She’s been in political circles for years. But who is Ms. Wiles, the operative set to be the first woman to step into the powerful role of White House chief of staff?

The daughter of NFL player and sportscaster Pat Summerall, Ms. Wiles worked in the Washington office of New York Rep. Jack Kemp in the 1970s. Following that were stints on Ronald Reagan’s campaign and in his White House as a scheduler.

Ms. Wiles then headed to Florida, where she advised two Jacksonville mayors and worked for Rep. Tillie Fowler. After that came statewide campaigns in rough and tumble Florida politics, with Ms. Wiles being credited with helping businessman Rick Scott win the governor’s office.

After briefly managing Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman’s 2012 presidential campaign, she ran Mr. Trump’s 2016 effort in Florida, when his win in the state helped him clinch the White House.

Two years later, Ms. Wiles helped get Ron DeSantis elected as Florida’s governor. But the two would develop a rift that eventually led to DeSantis to urge Mr. Trump’s 2020 campaign to cuts its ties with the strategist, when she was again running the then-president’s state campaign.

Ms. Wiles ultimately went on to lead Mr. Trump’s primary campaign against DeSantis and trounced the Florida governor.

Ms. Wiles had posted just three times on X this year at the time of her announcement. Shortly before DeSantis dropped out of the presidential race in January, Ms. Wiles made a rare appearance on social media. She responded to a message that DeSantis had cleared his campaign website of upcoming events with a short but clear message: “Bye, bye.”

Joining up with Mr. Trump’s third campaign in its nascent days, Ms. Wiles is one of the few top officials to survive an entire Trump campaign and was part of the team that put together a far more professional operation for his third White House bid — even if the former president routinely broke through those guardrails anyway.

She largely avoided the spotlight, even refusing to take the mic to speak as Mr. Trump celebrated his victory early Wednesday morning.

But she showed she was not above taking on tasks reserved for volunteers. At one of Mr. Trump’s appearances in Iowa in July of last year, as the former president posed for pictures with a long line of voters, Ms. Wiles grabbed a clipboard and started approaching people waiting to get them to fill out cards committing to caucus for Mr. Trump in the leadoff primary contest.

“If we leave the conference room after a meeting and somebody leaves trash on the table, Susie’s the person to grab the trash and put it in the trash can,” said Chris LaCivita, who served as campaign co-chair along with Ms. Wiles.

Another of her three posts on X this year was in the closing days of the campaign, clapping back after billionaire Mark Cuban remarked that Mr. Trump didn’t have “strong, intelligent women” in his orbit. After Ms. Wiles’ selection as White House chief of staff, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, a Trump backer, quipped on X that the president-elect had chosen a “strong, intelligent woman” as his chief of staff.

Ms. Wiles was able to help control Mr. Trump’s worst impulses — not by chiding him or lecturing, but by earning his respect and showing him that he was better off when he followed her advice than flouted it. At one point late in the campaign, when Mr. Trump gave a widely criticised speech in Pennsylvania in which he strayed from his talking points and suggested he wouldn’t mind the media being shot, Ms,. Wiles came out to stare at him silently.

Mr. Trump often referenced Ms. Wiles on the campaign trail, publicly praising her leadership of what he said he was often told was his “best-run campaign.”

“She’s incredible. Incredible,” he said at a Milwaukee rally earlier this month.

In his first administration, Mr. Trump went through four chiefs of staff — including one who served in an acting capacity for a year — in a period of record-setting personnel churn.

A chief of staff serves as the president’s confidant, helping to execute an agenda and balancing competing political and policy priorities. They also tend to serve as a gatekeeper, helping determine whom the president spends their time and to whom they speak — an effort under which Mr. Trump chafed inside the White House.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly said he believes the biggest mistake of his first term was hiring the wrong people. He was new to Washington then, he has said, and didn’t know any better.

“Susie will continue to work tirelessly to Make America Great Again,” said Trump (File)