Daniella Gibbs Léger

Daniella Gibbs Léger is the executive vice president for Communications and Strategy at American Progress. Previously, she was the organization’s senior vice president for American Values and New Communities, where her work focused on the intersection of politics, race, demographic change, religion, and values.

Prior to joining American Progress, Léger served as a special assistant to the president and director of message events in the Obama administration. In this role she was responsible for helping to plan and execute the president’s official domestic events. Prior to joining the White House in January 2009, Léger was the vice president for Communications at American Progress, where she specialized in domestic and economic policy, as well as American Progress’s overall communications strategy.

Léger has also been the deputy director of communications at the Democratic National Committee, where she began working in June 2002 as communications director for the Women’s Vote Center in the political department. During her tenure at the Democratic National Committee, Léger also handled African American and specialty media and was a regional media director during the 2004 presidential cycle. Prior to that, Léger spent two years at the National Newspaper Publishers Association as their marketing associate and political liaison. Léger also worked at Sony Music in New York City for three years before moving to Washington, D.C.

Léger has been a guest on numerous TV and radio shows and has been quoted in various print publications. Her columns have been posted on the Huffington Post and TheGrio.com, and she is currently a contributing columnist for Essence.com and Loop21.com. Named one “DC’s Top 9 Blacks Behind the Scenes” and of the top 15 African American women in politics under 40, Léger holds a degree in government and a minor in sociology from the University of Virginia.