Heather Anne Nauert (born January 27, 1970) is an American broadcast journalist and former government official who served as Spokesperson for the United States Department of State in the Donald Trump administration from 2017 to 2019. Nauert also served as Acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs from March 2018 to April 2019.
Prior to her positions at the Department of State, she had a nearly 20-year career in broadcast journalism. Nauert worked as a news anchor and correspondent at Fox News Channel, including the news program Fox & Friends, and as a news anchor and correspondent for ABC News.
Early life Nauert is a native of Rockford, Illinois, and spent much of her childhood in Wisconsin. Her father, Peter Nauert, was an executive in the insurance industry. She has three brothers: Justin, Jonathan, and Joseph.
Nauert attended Keith Country Day School in Rockford, Illinois. After landing an internship hosting a country music video program in Washington, D.C., she stayed there to finish school, earning her Bachelor of Arts degree in communications from Mount Vernon College for Women. She received her master's degree in journalism from Columbia University.
Background In March 2018, the AP wrote about Nauert's "meteoric rise" in the State Department. "U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and Nauert are among the few women in the Trump administration with high-profile voices on foreign policy. Only three State Department officials – all men – now outrank Nauert."
While at the State Department, Nauert conducted press briefings and oversaw communications and public diplomacy for the 75,000-person department. She reported directly to two secretaries of state, Rex Tillerson and Mike Pompeo, and traveled extensively, including to North Korea to participate in denuclearization talks and bring home three American hostages held by the regime.
She also served on the board of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, formerly known as the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which administers U.S. taxpayer-funded television and radio networks, including Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Asia, Radio Free Liberty, Cuba Broadcasting and Middle East Broadcasting Networks.
After leaving public office, Nauert joined several boards for leading national security and international relations organizations. In 2019, Trump appointed Nauert to the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board and the President's Commission on White House Fellowships.
Nauert serves on the Board of the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, which advocates for strong U.S. foreign policy, as well as U.S. issues overseas. In 2023, she joined USGLC's newly launched Conservative Foreign Policy Study Group alongside over 60 conservative foreign policy and national security leaders.
In 2020, Nauert joined the Board of Advisors for the Center for New American Security, an independent, bipartisan nonprofit that conducts research and develops pragmatic and principled defense and national security policies. The Board includes leaders from the military, government, private sector, and academia. She was a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank, until 2021.
In 2020, Nauert joined the advisory board of BGR Group, a government relations and public affairs firm in Washington, D.C. She also serves as a senior advisor to corporations, think tanks, and foundations. Nauert advises Fortune 500 companies, reporting to CEOs and boards of directors, providing leaders with strategic communications guidance, including developing and leading media campaigns to achieve clients' unique goals.
Since 2021, Nauert has served on the National Advisory Board of Warriors in Quiet Waters, a Montana-based veterans service organization that empowers post-911 combat veterans to thrive and live purpose-driven lives.
Nauert consults corporate and non-profit clients. In 2023, she joined the Federal Advisory Board of Armis, a cybersecurity firm. She is a contributor to the British TV network, ITV News, where she provided analysis of the 2024 election.
Career Broadcast journalism Before serving in government, Nauert spent nearly 20 years as a news anchor and correspondent at Fox News and ABC News, where she covered the September 11 terror attacks, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and genocide in Darfur, Sudan.
Nauert covered four U.S. presidential elections, Republican and Democratic conventions, a presidential inauguration, and the 2008 financial crisis. She also anchored the coverage of the terrorist attacks in Boston, Orlando, and San Bernardino.
In 1996, Nauert was a reporter for the syndicated business program First Business. She worked for Fox News from 1998 to 2005, first as a contributor for three years and then as a correspondent for four years. During her time as a correspondent, she regularly contributed to The Big Story, where she ultimately became co-anchor in 2007.
She departed Fox News and joined ABC News from 2005 to 2007, where she worked as a general assignment correspondent, contributing to ABC World News Tonight, Good Morning America, and Nightline.
While at ABC, she was nominated for an Emmy Award for her in-depth piece on teenage girls in Iraq during the war on the special series 13 Around the World. In 2007, Nauert returned to Fox News as co-host with John Gibson of the weekday edition of The Big Story until it was canceled in 2008.
Nauert also co-anchored the newscasts Good Day Early Call and Good Day New York Wake Up with co-anchor Steve Lacy weekday mornings for Fox Broadcasting Company owned-and-operated station WNYW in New York City. In October 2012, Nauert left Good Day Wake Up to rejoin Fox News Channel full time as an anchor and breaking news reporter. She appeared regularly on Fox & Friends. According to the Washington Post, Nauert "broadcast just about every right-wing talking-point under the sun" when she was a presenter on Fox News. She referred to illegal immigrant students as "illegals" and cited CDC studies that immigrant children were bringing disease like tuberculosis.
She has appeared on two fictional TV shows in which she played herself: 24 (3 episodes, 2010) and Brother's Keeper (1 episode, 1999).
Reporter in Iraq While working as a reporter for Fox News and ABC News, Nauert traveled to Baghdad, Fallujah, Irbil, and Jordan, where she covered the beginning of the Iraq War, the insurgency, and the reconstruction. She also covered Saddam Hussein's trial and death, the first free election, and the everyday life of Iraqi civilians, including young girls living in an orphanage.
More than 4,400 Americans were killed and 32,000 wounded in the War. Nauert said, "The impact of this war on service members, their families and our nation is still apparent – and even raw – today."
Speaking about her various reporting assignments in 2004, 2006, and 2007, Nauert said, "Each reporting stint was about six weeks and required a lot of pre-preparation. I'll never forget the look my dad gave me when I told him I volunteered to spend Christmas in Iraq during a particularly unnerving time. To me, it was an honor and the least I could do."
While reporting on the conflicts, Nauert provided viewers with hourly or daily updates. She later said on Instagram, "At the time, this was the most significant story in the world, with every major news organization sending teams and more than 30 coalition partners (countries working together) sending troops."
September 11 Attacks Nauert covered the 9/11 terror attacks from New York City while working as a correspondent for the Fox News Channel. Her account was documented in the book "At Ground Zero: 25 Stories from Young Reporters Who Were There."
United States Department of State
On April 24, 2017, the United States Department of State announced that Nauert would be the new State Department spokesperson, her first role in government. She held her first press briefing in that role five weeks later, on June 6, 2017, and frequently appeared on TV.
Following the dismissal of Steve Goldstein on March 13, 2018, Nauert was named acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, the fourth ranking position in the State Department. In that role, she oversaw a budget of $1.2 billion and almost 1,000 employees. She was the Department's highest-ranking woman while simultaneously serving as Department Spokesperson.
During her time in the State Department, Nauert did not develop a close relationship with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, but after Tillerson's dismissal, she became part of Mike Pompeo's inner circle when he took over as Secretary of State.
In these roles, Nauert communicated U.S. foreign policy and formulated the public messaging for the 75,000-person State Department and nearly 300 U.S. embassies and consulates worldwide. She helped plan, execute, and manage the messaging of all overseas trips led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
She also helped facilitate the messaging on top department initiatives, such as initiating the maximum pressure sanctions campaign against North Korea, holding China accountable for actions in the South China Sea, and combating state-sponsored disinformation from Russia, China, and Iran.
In May 2018, Nauert was part of a small team who went with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on a secret mission to bring three Americans home from North Korea. She provided strategic counsel to Secretary Pompeo during his high-stakes meetings with North Korean officials, as they met to plan the landmark summit between President Trump and Kim Jong Un, which took place in June 2018.
At the end of Secretary Pompeo's 13-hour meetings with North Korea officials, including an hour and a half meeting with Kim Jong Un, North Korea agreed to release three Americans who were wrongfully detained in a Pyongyang prison. As The Washington Post reported, this monumental decision "set the stage for a landmark summit between President Trump and Kim Jong Un."
To ensure their safe return to the United States, President Trump announced the news as the Americans took off on a government plane from Pyongyang.
Nauert voiced opposition to the Iraqi Kurdistan's decision to hold an independence referendum in September 2017.
When the United States withdrew from Unesco, Nauert was quoted by The New York Times as saying, "We were in arrears to the tune of $550 million or so, and so the question is, do we want to pay that money? With this anti-Israel bias that's long documented on the part of Unesco, that needs to come to an end."
In April 2018, Nauert voiced support for Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen. She also condemned "Iran's malign influence" in Yemen. In May 2018, Nauert said in response to the Gaza border protests: "We oppose actions against Israel at the International Criminal Court (...) because it does not help the cause for peace."
Nauert called for the release of Ukrainian political prisoners in Russia such as Oleg Sentsov, Stanislav Klykh, Oleksandr Shumkov and Volodymyr Balukh. In a State Department statement, Nauert said: "The United States is deeply concerned by the growing number of individuals—now more than 150—identified by credible human rights organizations as political and religious prisoners held by the government of the Russian Federation.... We call on Russia to release all those identified as political or religious prisoners immediately and cease its use of the legal system to suppress dissent and peaceful religious practice. The Russian people, like people everywhere, deserve equal treatment under the law and the ability to exercise their rights without fear of retribution."