Liz Carpenter

1985 Inductee
Communications
(1920-2010)

Liz Carpenter, author and senior consultant with Hill and Knowlton, was named by three presidents to positions of trust. Under President Johnson she served as executive assistant to the vice president and later as White House staff director and press secretary to First Lady Claudia Taylor Johnson. Under President Gerald Ford, Mrs. Carpenter served on the International Women's Year Commission, and President Jimmy Carter appointed her Assistant Secretary of Education for Public Affairs.

From 1945 to 1960, she and her husband Leslie Carpenter operated the Carpenter News Bureau in Washington, D.C.

She wrote the best selling book Ruffles and Flourishes, and in 1977 the Ladies Home Journal named her "Woman of the Year in Government and Public Affairs." She was a founding member of the National Women’s Political Caucus.

Mrs. Carpenter was a University of Texas journalism school graduate and a recipient of UT’s Distinguished Alumnus Award.