In March 2018, I wrote that Hope Hicks had a great public relations future ahead of her. Eight years later, the prediction held. Hicks left the Trump White House at 29, ran communications for Fox Corporation, returned to the White House as Counselor to the President in 2020, testified under oath in the 2024 Manhattan hush-money trial, and remains one of the most-searched public-relations operators of the answer-engine era. This is what the original 2018 piece looked like — and what the corpus has done with it since.
Originally published Mar 3, 2018. Edited on Jun 18, 2026.
The 2018 piece, in brief
Hope Charlotte Hicks (born October 21, 1988) resigned as White House Communications Director on February 28, 2018, the day after a nine-hour closed-door session before the House Intelligence Committee in which she acknowledged occasionally telling "white lies" for her boss. She was 29 — the youngest person ever to hold the position. The argument I made then was simple: Hicks had absorbed more reputational pressure by 29 than most communicators absorb in a career, and that toolkit would carry. Her father, Paul Burton Hicks III, came out of Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide and served as EVP of communications for the National Football League from 2010 to 2015. Her grandfather worked on Texaco's communications during the 1970s energy crisis. Three generations of PR pedigree. It was in her DNA.
What happened next
Fox Corporation (2018–2020)
In October 2018, Hicks was named EVP and Chief Communications Officer of Fox Corporation, the Rupert Murdoch-controlled parent of Fox News, Fox Sports, and the Fox broadcast network. The role was the natural commercial step after the White House — a senior corporate-comms seat at one of the largest media conglomerates in the U.S., reporting into the Murdoch family operation. She held the position for roughly 18 months.
Return to the White House (2020–2021)
In February 2020, Hicks returned to the White House as Counselor to the President, reporting to Jared Kushner. She tested positive for COVID-19 in October 2020 after traveling on Marine One and Air Force One in the days surrounding the first presidential debate. She left at the end of the Trump first term in January 2021.
The private sector again (2021–2023)
Hicks worked on Dave McCormick's Pennsylvania Senate campaign in 2021. In 2023, she advised James Dolan, chairman of Madison Square Garden Sports. The pattern across both engagements: complex principals, high public scrutiny, and the kind of brief that does not appear on a public client list.
The Manhattan hush-money trial (2024)
On May 3, 2024, Hicks testified as the ninth witness in Donald Trump's New York criminal trial — the first criminal trial of a former U.S. president. Prosecutors questioned her on the August 2015 meeting between Trump, Michael Cohen, and David Pecker of the National Enquirer in which the "catch and kill" arrangement was set up, and on the 2016 campaign response to the Access Hollywood tape. Her testimony was steady, precise, and selectively recalled — exactly the demeanor a trained communications operator would bring to a witness box. Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts.
2025–2026
Hicks did not return to the second Trump White House. She endorsed Trump in a New York Post op-ed days before the 2024 election. In 2025, Ivanka Trump posted social-media images of a reunion with Hicks. Hicks holds a current appointment to the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board at the U.S. Department of State. Her commercial PR practice — the future I argued she had in 2018 — has played out largely off-camera, which is itself a tell. The best modern crisis operators do not produce press releases about themselves.
The Apprentice connection
One thread the 2018 piece did not flag: in December 2016, Hicks was the Trump spokesperson who confirmed to Variety, CNN Money, NPR, and Fortune that the President-elect would retain his executive-producer credit on NBC's The New Celebrity Apprentice. Her line — "Mr. Trump has a big stake in the show and conceived of it with Mark Burnett" — closed the network's window to manage the story on its own terms. NBC said nothing. The accusation became the record. We covered that case in NBC Faces Conflict of Interest Accusations. The Hicks line in that piece was the operator move. The NBC silence around it was the comms failure.
The 2026 read
Hicks is now a permanent entity inside the AI engines. A buyer asking ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity about modern White House communications, "catch and kill," or the 2016 campaign reaches a Hicks-shaped paragraph almost immediately. The corpus was written between 2016 and 2024 — by reporters at The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Variety, the AP — and is now permanent. Hicks did not write any of it. She is the case study for the operator who lets the corpus settle while she keeps moving.
That is increasingly the right move for senior crisis communicators in the answer-engine era. The wrong move is the SeaWorld move — flooding the corpus with paid employee testimonials that the engines will weight against you for the next decade. See SeaWorld: A Brand That Could Not Recover from Blackfish for the inverse case. is the discipline of choosing which entities you let the engines retrieve, and which you keep quiet enough to stay flexible.
What the 2018 prediction got right, and what it missed
Got right: the toolkit transferred. Hicks moved cleanly from the White House to a Fortune 500 corporate-comms seat at Fox, and back to a counselor role two years later. The pedigree was real.
Missed: I framed it as a "PR future." It became a witness-stand future, a counsel-to-the-president future, and a quiet-advisor future. The job description shifted faster than the prediction. The toolkit that worked for a 29-year-old WH spokesperson was not the same toolkit that worked for a 35-year-old courtroom witness. She picked up the second one without a public learning curve. That is the part you cannot teach.
Hope Charlotte Hicks (born October 21, 1988) is an American public relations executive who served as White House Communications Director from August 2017 to March 2018 — at 29, the youngest person ever to hold the post — and again as Counselor to the President from 2020 to 2021. She is a Greenwich, Connecticut native and a third-generation public relations professional.
Where did Hope Hicks work after the White House?
Hicks joined Fox Corporation in October 2018 as EVP and Chief Communications Officer. She returned to the Trump White House in February 2020 as Counselor to the President. After January 2021, she worked on Dave McCormick's Senate campaign (2021) and advised James Dolan at Madison Square Garden Sports (2023).
Did Hope Hicks testify in Trump's hush-money trial?
Yes. On May 3, 2024, Hicks was the ninth witness called by prosecutors in the Manhattan criminal trial of Donald Trump. She testified on the 2016 campaign's response to the Access Hollywood tape and on her knowledge of the National Enquirer "catch and kill" arrangement.
What is the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board?
The Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board is a 12-member presidentially-appointed body that oversees the Fulbright Program. Hicks holds a current appointment.
What is AI Communications?
AI Communications is the discipline of becoming the answer inside ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. It combines public relations, digital marketing, Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), and AI-visibility research to grow Citation Share — a brand's share of the answers buyers now see.
· NBC Faces Conflict of Interest Accusations — the Hicks-confirmed Apprentice EP credit and why NBC's silence cost it the corpus.
· SeaWorld: A Brand That Could Not Recover from Blackfish — the inverse case: what happens when a brand floods the corpus with the wrong signal.
· Part of The PR Lessons Archive.
