Early life and career

Perino was born in Evanston, Wyoming, the daughter of Janice "Jan" and Leo Perino, and grew up in Denver, Colorado. Two of her paternal great-grandparents were Italian immigrants. She attended Ponderosa High School in Parker, Colorado, a suburb of Denver. Perino graduated from Colorado State University-Pueblo (CSU-Pueblo) in 1993 with a bachelor's degree in mass communications and minors in both political science and Spanish. While attending CSU-Pueblo, she was on the forensics team. She also worked at KTSC-TV, the campus-based Rocky Mountain PBS affiliate. While at college, she also worked at KCCY-FM on the 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. shift. Perino went on to obtain a masters degree in public affairs reporting from the University of Illinois Springfield (UIS). During her time at UIS, she also worked for WCIA, a CBS affiliate, as a daily reporter covering the Illinois Capitol.

Perino next worked in Washington, D.C., for Rep. Scott McInnis (R-CO) as a staff assistant before serving nearly four years as the press secretary for Rep. Dan Schaefer (R-CO), who then chaired the House Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Power.

After Schaefer announced his retirement in 1998, Perino and husband Peter McMahon moved to Britain. After a year there, Perino and McMahon moved back to the United States and resided in San Diego, California, for three years.

In November 2001, Perino returned to Washington, D.C., and secured a position as a spokesperson for the Department of Justice, at which she served for two years.

Perino then joined the White House staff as the associate director of communications for the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), where she provided strategic advice on message development, media relations and public outreach. The House Oversight Committee, chaired by Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-NY), claimed in its findings on climate change censorship, that the CEQ exerted undue control of media relations in governmental scientific agencies during her tenure. Science writer Mark Bowen claimed that Perino directed other public affairs officers to kill press releases about the danger of hydrogen fuel cells after President George W. Bush announced his support for them.

Press Secretary

Perino served as Deputy Press Secretary from 2005 to 2007. She was hired by Scott McClellan. In the role, Perino communicated many times a day with President Bush's director of communications, his press secretary and his director of media affairs, as well as serving as the spokesperson for the White House on environmental issues. In addition, she served as the coordinator for all agencies on environment, energy and natural resource issues, as well as reviewing and approving the agencies' major announcements,

From March 27 to April 30, 2007 she was the Acting White House Press Secretary while Tony Snow underwent treatment for colon cancer.

On August 31, 2007, Bush announced that Snow would be resigning his post for health reasons and that Perino would become his replacement. Perino was accordingly promoted to the rank of Assistant to the President, and served as White House Press Secretary from September 14, 2007 until the end of the Bush Administration in January 2009.

In 2007, during an appearance as the week's celebrity guest on the radio quiz show Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!, Perino shared that she had once panicked during a White House press briefing when a reporter referred to the Cuban Missile Crisis because she did not know what it was. "I was panicked a bit because I really don’t know about . . . the Cuban Missile Crisis. It had to do with Cuba and missiles, I'm pretty sure. I came home and I asked my husband. I said, 'Wasn't that like the Bay of Pigs thing?’ And he said, 'Oh, Dana.'"

On December 14, 2008, a TV journalist, Muntadar al-Zeidi, threw two shoes at Bush during a Baghdad press conference. Bush successfully dodged both, but Perino's eye was injured by a microphone stand during the commotion surrounding al-Zeidi's arrest.

Post-Bush administration career

Since leaving the White House, Perino became a political commentator on Fox News. She is a regular co-host on the talk show, The Five. In November 2009, she was nominated by President Barack Obama to serve on the Broadcasting Board of Governors, an agency overseeing government-sponsored international broadcasting, and was confirmed by the Senate on June 30, 2010. In 2010, she started teaching a class in political communications part-time at George Washington University's Graduate School of Political Management. In March 2011 the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., announced that Perino had joined its books imprint Crown Forum as Editorial Director but she has since left this position.

Views on atheism

Commenting on lawsuits brought by atheists to remove the ‘under God’ clause from the Pledge of Allegiance, she stated "“If these people really don’t like it, they don’t have to live here".

Personal life

Perino met her future husband, Peter McMahon, in 1996. McMahon, born in Blackpool, Lancashire, England, is a businessman involved in the international marketing and sales of medical products. They were married in 1998. It is Perino's first marriage and McMahon's third. While Perino and McMahon have no children, McMahon has children from his previous marriage as well as two grandchildren.

In May 2012 Perino appeared on Jeopardy! during its "Power Players" week, facing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and CNBC's David Faber.

[ Source: Wikipedia ]