Name: Katy Summerlin
Hometown: Fairfax, Va.
Position: Communications Director, Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga.
Age: 25
Alma mater: James Madison University
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Washington Examiner: How did you get started on the Hill?
Summerlin: I’m a military kid, so that’s what brought my family to Northern Virginia in 2001. I grew up around the D.C. area. I got my start on the Hill by interning for Rep. Frank Wolf, who was my hometown congressman. I worked on the campaign for three weeks before I was asked to come up to the Hill to be a staff assistant for him. He was great to work for, he was a good man with a lot of integrity. He’s a tireless crusader for human rights.
Then I moved over to the Oversight and Government Reform Committee and worked for Rep. Darrell Issa when he was the chairman. He was such a fun guy to do communications for because he’s so outspoken, and we had a very active press shop. It was a fascinating committee to work for because the purview was so wide. Any kind of problem in the federal government, we were on it. Rep. Collins was on OGR, and a year and a half later, he needed a communications director, so from there, I moved over to run his press shop.
Examiner: You started in college by majoring in journalism. How did you end up switching to politics?
Summerlin: My family kind of laughs about it, because when I grew up I always wanted to be a journalist and do television. I did not come from a political family at all. My parents never gave a dime to any campaign, and I had never been to a political event in my life until late in my college years.
I started paying attention in my junior year of college, during the Tea Party wave in 2010. It was a big shift, it caught my attention, and I picked up a political science minor because what was happening was so fascinating to me. I also thought there needed to be more Republican women. On my campus, many women were reluctant to get involved in politics, but for me it was how I decided to chart my path post-college.
Examiner: Is there anything about working on the Hill that you would say is challenging?
Summerlin: You need a lot of stamina to work up here. People aren’t always going to agree with you, and you’re going to catch criticism. It happens to everyone and you have to be resilient. You need to always remember who you’re working for and why you came up here in the first place. That’s what drives you.
Examiner: What advice would you give people who are trying to work on the Hill?
Summerlin: Find a mentor. It could be several mentors over the course of your career, and sometimes you can find them in really unexpected places. Find someone to look out for you and give you good advice. That would be my advice to people who are interns, or people who want to find their next gig and grow professionally. It’s applicable to any career field.
And learn to like coffee. I didn’t drink coffee until I came to the Hill. You’re going to have a lot of coffees on the Hill.
Examiner: Do you have any favorite political books?
Summerlin: The first political book that I read was Game Change about the 2008 election. I’m currently reading Peggy Noonan’s What I Saw at the Revolution. It’s very old Washington, like what it was like here in the ’80s. I think it’s different now in a lot of ways, but I also see things in there that are the same now as they were in the 80s. I love the way she describes Georgetown.
I heard her speak a few months ago, and she said something that really stuck with me. She advised us to be careful what we read. You can read the trashy romance novel when you’re on vacation at the beach, but when you have to write the president’s next speech, you make sure you’re really curating what you read, and know the classics. I took that to heart, because I aspire to be a better writer.
Examiner: What are your hobbies?
Summerlin: I grew up playing Scottish fiddle music. I’m a classically trained violinist, and I was playing in orchestra. When I was 12 or 13, I was getting tired of it, because it was starting to get uncool, like a lot of things are when you’re a teenager. But at the time, just by serendipity, my orchestra director at the time happened to be the reigning national Scottish fiddle champion. So my parents jumped at the opportunity to keep me engaged with music and I started taking lessons from her. It’s been a wonderful way to connect with our Scottish heritage. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I competed in the national championship when I was 16. Some kids go to soccer camp, some kids go to football camp, I went to fiddle camp. I still play. On nice days, I go down to the waterfront in Old Town Alexandria and play for the folks down there.
