She may be a new to the national political scene, but Janna Ryan already seems comfortable with the spotlight. Eleanor Clift on the potential second lady’s high-powered first career, family politics, and down-home image.
For
a newcomer to the national stage, Janna Christine Little Ryan comes
across as remarkably poised and confident, with a winning smile and a
fashionably windswept look—in short, what’s known in the business as a
natural.
And no wonder; politics were in her DNA long before she met and married Rep. Paul Ryan, at the time in his first term in Congress and considered one of the Capitol’s most eligible bachelors.
They
dated for a year until they were wed in 2000. Janna Little had been
comfortably settled into a career track as a high-powered attorney and
lobbyist for Price Waterhouse Coopers in Arlington, Va. A graduate
of the prestigious women’s college Wellesley, she had a résumé
reflecting the leadership skills instilled by her education and in her
upbringing as the eldest of three daughters whose mother had blazed the
path both to Wellesley and law school.
