Leslie Sanchez

Since 2003, Leslie Sanchez has served as a leader in public opinion research specializing in presidential and statewide elections as well as the women’s and Hispanic-Latino marketplace. Her career has been spent at the forefront of predictive data analytics that shift opinion, shape policy and aid the decision-making process for Fortune 500 companies, universities and colleges as well as global non-profit organizations.

For her work, Hispanic Business magazine called her one of the nation’s “100 Most Influential Hispanics,” and she was named “Texas Powerbroker” by the Houston Chronicle for being among the most influential Texans in Washington.

She is the author of two critically-acclaimed books: Los Republicanos, which accurately predicted key shifts of Latino vote prior to 2008; and You’ve Come a Long Way, Maybe: Sarah (Palin), Michelle (Obama), Hillary (Clinton) and the Shaping of the New American Woman, which examines the unique challenges women face on their Road to White House.

Leslie started her career selling P.F. Collier encyclopedias door-to-door. Once in Washington, she served as deputy press secretary at the Republican National Committee where she was one of the principal architects of the organization’s first-ever multi-million dollar ad campaign aimed at Hispanic voters. Soon after, Leslie was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve as executive director of the White House Initiative on Hispanic Education. Under her leadership, the initiative successfully built a grassroots network of 20,000 parents, educators and students, and issued two Presidential Commission reports aimed at closing the academic achievement gap.

Leslie appears on a wide range of major media outlets, including This Week (ABC), Face the Nation (CBS), The Today Show (NBC), The Early Show (CBS), The News Hour (PBS), CNBC, Fox Business, Fox News Channel and Univision. In 2008 she was an on-camera member of CNN’s Peabody award-winning election coverage team, making her one of only two Hispanic Americans hired as political contributors at major news networks, and the first at CNN.

During the 2014 midterm elections, Leslie served as an on-air political analyst of U.S. global election coverage for BBC and Yahoo News.

Leslie has an MBA from Johns Hopkins University and a B.A. from The George Washington University. She has also served on the board of Providence Health Foundation in Washington, DC and is a director of Nativity School, a high-performing inner-city school in Los Angeles.