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Victoria Coates

Foreign Policy Advisor to Ted Cruz's 2016 Presidential Campaign

Dr. Victoria Coates is a cultural historian who received her Ph.D. from The University of Pennsylvania specializing in Italian renaissance studies. Her work has appeared in The Sixteenth-Century Journal, Gazette des Beaux-Arts and Renaissance Studies. In 2007, Dr. Coates became the Director of Research in the Office of Donald Rumsfeld and provided editorial support and content analysis for Mr. Rumsfeld's New York Times best-selling memoir Known and Unknown. In 2011, Dr. Coates joined the Rick Perry presidential campaign as an advisor for foreign policy. In 2013 she became a senior advisor for national security policy for the United States Senate. She has also been a senior fellow at the Commonwealth Foundation, an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and a consulting curator at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Dr. Coates lives in Philadelphia with her husband, two children and two dogs. Her new book is David's Sling: A History of Democracy in Ten Works of Art.