Independent Women’s Forum is pleased to announce that the Wall Street Journal’s “Potomac Watch” columnist Kimberley Strassel is the latest entry in our popular series of Champion Women profiles.

Although Strassel writes one of the preeminent columns in the U.S. and is one of the nation's most sought-after speakers, her ability to see beyond the incestuous Washington establishment comes from her roots. Strassel grew up in Oregon, where her great-great grandmother had been a homesteader.

“So, for instance, one great story: my dad, as I told you, was a mechanic, and he told me I couldn’t have a car until I’d taken one apart and put it back together,” says Strassel. Lured partly by the novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who romanticized his alma mater, Strassel graduated from Princeton and then was hired by the Wall Street Journal as lowly news assistant for the Journal’s European edition, which took her to Brussels.

She has been writing the “Potomac Watch” column since 2007. She divides her time between Washington, D.C., and Alaska, where she lives with her husband and children.

We know IWF’s audience will be intrigued by Strassel’s life and writing—she’s a favorite columnist for many of us.