Jen O'Malley Dillon


Jennifer Brigid O'Malley Dillon is an American political strategist and the campaign manager for the 2020 presidential campaign of Joe Biden. Her appointment was announced March 12, 2020. O'Malley Dillon had previously served as the campaign manager for the Beto O'Rourke 2020 presidential campaign.

Early life and education

A native of Franklin, Massachusetts, her great-grandparents were Irish Catholic immigrants from Gorumna Island, County Galway. She earned a Bachelor of Arts from Tufts University.

Career

O'Malley Dillon's first role in politics was answering phones for Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger. She joined the Al Gore 2000 presidential campaign as a field organizer in 1999 and rose to become a regional field director by the end of the campaign. She worked as a field director for the United States Senate campaigns of Tim Johnson and Mary Landrieu. In 2003, she worked as Iowa field director for the John Edwards 2004 presidential campaign, and, after Edwards left the race, she became deputy campaign manager for Senator Tom Daschle's re-election campaign.
In 2007, she again went to work for John Edwards on his 2008 presidential campaign as his Iowa state director and later deputy campaign manager. After Edwards was again eliminated, O'Malley Dillon joined Barack Obama's presidential campaign for the general election as battleground states director. After Obama's election, she worked on the presidential transition as associate director of personnel, and then was hired as the executive director of the Democratic National Committee under Tim Kaine.
In 2011, she joined Obama's re-election campaign as deputy campaign manager. After President Obama's re-election, she co-founded the political consulting firm Precision Strategies with fellow Obama campaign alumni Stephanie Cutter and Teddy Goff. She led Precision's consulting effort for the Liberal Party of Canada in the 2015 Canadian federal election.
After the 2016 United States presidential election, she was chair of the Democratic National Committee's Unity Reform Commission. In 2019 she was involved in an effort by Democratic Party data and political personnel to create a data exchange to allow for greater information sharing between Democratic campaigns and allies—a project that party leaders see as crucial for catching up with the Republican data program. Later in 2019, she was hired as campaign manager for Beto O'Rourke's 2020 presidential campaign.
In March 2020, O'Malley Dillon was announced as the new campaign manager for the Joe Biden 2020 presidential campaign after a successful Super Tuesday for the candidate. She will take over from Greg Schultz and Anita Dunn, who had shared campaign management duties for the past month. Schultz and Dunn will remain on staff in senior advisor roles.