Lewis was born to a Jewish family in 1937 in Jersey City, New Jersey. She is the older sister of former United States Congressman Barney Frank. She attended Radcliffe College, the former women's college within Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but did not graduate. While there, she met Gerald A. Lewis, whom she married and with whom she subsequently moved to Florida. They divorced in 1968 and Lewis moved back to Massachusetts. Ann married Myron Sponder in 1989.
Lewis was director of communications and deputy campaign manager for the Clinton-Gore Reelection Campaign in 1995 to 1996. From 1997 to 2000, Lewis served as director of communications and counselor to President Bill Clinton in the White House.
Hillary Clinton (2000–2008)
Lewis served as senior advisor to Hillary Clinton's 2000 campaign for U.S. Senate. She served as director of communications for HillPAC and Friends of Hillary 2005 to 2007. She also served as national chair of the DNC Women's Vote Center, where she led the Democratic Party's major initiative to reach, engage, and mobilize women voters from 2003 to 2004.
Lewis was senior advisor for Hillary Clinton's 2008 – 2016 presidential campaign. Lewis was co-chair for Jewish Women for Hillary 2016.
Recent work
Following the conclusion of Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign, Lewis founded NoLimits.org, an issue-based educational organization enabling individuals to stay engaged and active on issues such as health care reform, economic and work-family policies, international and national women's rights, security matters, and other issues and policies championed by Hillary Clinton. She is currently serving as president of the
Academia
In 2001, Lewis was the Richman Visiting Professor at Brandeis University, teaching a course on the Presidency entitled "The West Wing and The Real World" and a Public Policy Fellow at the Annenberg School of Communications of the University of Pennsylvania. Lewis was appointed by President Clinton as co-chair of the President's Commission on the Celebration of Women in American History, and she was appointed by the President and Senator Daschle to the Women's Progress Commission, established by Congress to report on women's historical sites. She chaired the U.S. Government Working Group for the Women 2000: Beijing Plus Five Special Session of the General Assembly.
Women's Suffrage Collection
Lewis maintains the Ann Lewis Women's Suffrage Collection, an archive of suffrage-related objects and ephemera.
Lewis is the author of "The West Wing: An Insider's View" in the Spring 2001 edition of Television Quarterly, the journal of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and other articles about American politics. She served on the advisory committee for the book Jews and American Politics, published in the fall of 2001, and is a member of the board of the Jewish Women's Archive. A regular speaker on politics and current events in the United States, Lewis delivered the keynote address to the European Forum in Alpbach, Austria, in 1999 on "Media and Democracy". She was a member of the U.S. delegations to the Vital Voices "Dawn of a New Millennium" Conference in Reykjavík, Iceland and to the European Preparatory session for the Beijing Plus Five Session in Geneva; led workshops in South Africa in preparation for the first-ever democratic elections in that country, and has participated in training seminars for political leaders in Eastern Europe. Representing Hillary Clinton's campaign in a March 17, 2008 United Jewish Communities forum in Washington, Ann Lewis was quoted as saying "The role of the president of the United States is to support the decisions that are made by the people of Israel. It is not up to us to pick and choose from among the political parties".
