Molly O’Rourke is an Executive in Residence with a joint appointment at the School of Communication and the School of Public Affairs. She also serves as Director of the Master of Arts (MA) program in Political Communication and as a Senior Advisor to the Sine Institute of Policy & Politics. She has more than two decades of experience in the field of public opinion research, most recently as a partner at Hart Research in Washington, DC. She has directed multiphase qualitative and quantitative research for a variety of advocacy organizations, political candidates and parties, and media outlets, including presidential campaigns and NBC News. Earlier in her career, Molly worked in the U.S. Senate, for EMILYs List, the women’s political action network, and as an analyst at the Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute.

For several years, she co-wrote a monthly column about trends in public opinion and political behavior titled “Behind the Numbers” for The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper. Molly previously chaired and currently serves on the Institutional Review Board (IRB) which oversees all human subject research at AU. She has served and continues to serve on several boards, including the Brown Alumni Association Board of Governors and a D.C. based theater company.