HOUSE LEADERSHIP
Nadeam Elshami Expertise: Communications, media relations, political
Deputy Communications Director/
Senior Advisor
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
H-163, The Capitol
Phone: (202) 226-7616
nadeam.elshami@mail.house.gov
Personal:
Born 04/29/1970 in Nashville, Tenn.
Education:
B.A., international business, University of
Evansville, 1991.
Professional:
1992–1994, staff assistant, Senate Mail
Room. 1994–1999, staff assistant, deputy
press secretary, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.
1998, deputy communications director,
Boxer for Senate. 1999–2005, press
secretary, deputy chief of staff, Rep. Jan
Schakowsky, D-Ill. 2004, communications
director, Up for Victory. 2005, national
press secretary, Senate Minority Whip
Richard Durbin, D-Ill. 2006–2007,
deputy communications director, senior
communications adviser, Senate Minority
Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill. 2007–present,
deputy communications director, House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Insider’s Guide to Key Committee Staff of the U.S. Congress, 2009
communications.
When Nadeam Elshami lays out his priorities for 2009, he
turned to the president’s February address to a joint session
of Congress.
“When you look at the president’s speech, he focused on
the economy, health care, education and energy,” said
Elshami, deputy communications director and senior advi-
sor to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
That illustrates the biggest change in Elshami’s job from
2008 to 2009. Instead of battling a president, Elshami and
the Democrats in Congress are eager to work with the
White House now that a Democrat lives there.
The difference can be felt every day, in things as seemingly
simple as a heads-up about upcoming events.
“When you had the Bush White House, when the president
gave a speech you had to watch and react to that,” he said.
As deputy communications director, Elshami works with
Communications Director Brendan Daly to develop a mes-
sage and communications strategy. Elshami focuses on the
day-to-day operations and ensuring a rapid response to
criticism and developments.
He and Pelosi’s team hit the ground running this year with
the $787 billion economic stimulus. And that presented
Elshami and other Democratic communicators with one of
their first challenges: getting reporters and the rest of the
country to call the bill a ‘recovery and reinvestment’ plan
instead of a stimulus.
“We succeeded,” he said. “Not too many people call it
stimulus.”
As a point person for the leader of the House, Elshami will
have his hand in nearly every issue that comes to the floor.
He expects to be spending a great deal of time this year
dealing with legislation to address the nation’s housing cri-
sis, the rapid deterioration in financial markets, and look-
ing down the road to entitlement reform.
Elshami really did work his way up from the mailroom,
through the ranks, to the Speaker’s office.
After graduating college in the early 1990s, Elshami worked
in the Senate mailroom in the afternoons. In the mornings,
he went to work as an intern, first in the office of Rep. Bob
Clement, D-Tenn., then for former Rep. Marjorie Margo-
lies-Mezvinsky, D-Iowa.
He had been serving as deputy communications advisor for
Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., when he joined Pelosi’s staff.
He made the move in 2007, shortly after Pelosi was sworn
in as the first female Speaker in U.S. history.
Elshami has an international background, having spent
much of his childhood in Egypt. He was born in Nashville,
but his family moved to Egypt when he was an infant. He
and his family returned to Tennessee in the eighth grade.
He and his wife Stacy live in Alexandria, Va., with their
two children.
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