Sandra Sobieraj Westfall ’89

Sandra Sobieraj Westfall was a six-year White House correspondent for The Associated Press whose tenure was book-ended by President Clinton’s impeachment scandal and the September 11 terrorist attacks when, in 2003, she moved to People magazine. At People, she has specialized in competitive, high-profile exclusives with everyone from Presidents and First Ladies (she has interviewed Michelle and Barack Obama 17 times—a tally nearly met by the dozen-plus sit-downs with President and Mrs. George W. Bush) to would-be presidents, and is a two-time winner of the White House Correspondents’ Association award for excellence in presidential reporting under deadline pressure. Westfall, a former legislative aide and speechwriter to the late U.S. Rep. Louise Slaughter, is married to Frank Westfall, a former Secret Service bomb technician and Navy EOD diver with whom she has a teenaged son, Jonathan, and two Shih-tzus named Scrabble and Dobby. A native of Rochester, N.Y., Westfall was known as “Sandy” at Princeton, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in politics and a certificate in Latin American studies. She holds a master’s in journalism from Stanford University. In her free time between tweets from @realDonaldTrump, Westfall chairs the advisory board of the Princeton Alumni Weekly, provides pro bono communications consulting for activist students of Newtown (Conn.) High School, and adds author to her resume with the November 2018 publication of “#StillWithHer: Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Moments That Sparked a Movement,” in collaboration with photographer Barbara Kinney and Secretary Hillary Clinton.