Former White House Press Secretary and Journalist Tony Snow will address the Government Relations Session of the ASCRS annual Symposium, Sunday,
April 6, 2008, 11:00 am, in Chicago.

His remarks will focus on the coming November elections and the prospects for health care reform.    

Tony Snow served as the White House Press Secretary for the George W. Bush administration from May 2006 to September 2007. In 1991, he served as director of speechwriting and deputy assistant to the president for media affairs for President George H. W. Bush (the elder).

He has spent a quarter of a century in the news business. He’s worked in all three major media—print, radio and television. He started his career in 1979 as an editorial writer for The Greensboro Record in North Carolina and went on to write editorials for The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk. He ran the editorial pages in both The Daily Press of Newport News and The Washington Times. He’s written nationally syndicated columns for both The Detroit News and USA Today.

For seven years, he served as the host of FOX News Sunday. Most recently, he reached Americans all across our country as the host of The Tony Snow Show on FOX News Radio, and Weekend Live with Tony Snow on the FOX News Channel.

Tony Snow was born in Berea, Kentucky, on June 1, 1955. He was raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, where his father taught social studies and was an assistant principal at Princeton High School. His mother was a nurse who died of colon cancer in 1973 when he was 17 years old. After graduating from Princeton High School in Sharonville, Ohio, Snow obtained his Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from Davidson College in 1977. He taught physics and geography in Kenya, and was a substitute teacher in Cincinnati, teaching everything from calculus to art. He also worked as an advocate for the mentally ill and developmentally disabled in North Carolina.

In February 2005, Snow was diagnosed with colon cancer. After successful colon surgery, Snow began a course of chemotherapy treatment and returned to work at FOX News in April 2005. In March 2007, ten months after becoming White House Press Secretary, Snow’s doctors discovered his cancer had returned. Vowing to fight the disease once again, he underwent surgery. In April 2007, Snow resumed his White House duties and began a second round of chemotherapy treatment, which he completed just prior to leaving the Bush Administration.

Snow is an avid musician. He plays the flute, saxophone, and guitar, and belongs to a cover band, Beats Workin’.

He is married to Jill Ellen Walker. They have one son, two daughters, three dogs, a cat and three guinea pigs. They live in Virginia.