Who Is Hope Hicks' Boyfriend? Everything You Need To Know About Jim Donovan
He has also worked for the Trump White House
Getty Hope Hicks has been a figure of some fascination since her days on Donald Trump's first presidential campaign. A close advisor and later his Director of Communications, she was thought to be an influential figure in Trump-world but she was also famously private. She almost never did interviews so no one ever knew much about her personality or her opinions. Even her testimony to Congress related to Trump's impeachment was done behind closed doors.
Now a special someone has apparently gotten past her very private exterior and hit her where it counts: in the heart. Reports are that Hicks has a new man in her life and they're pretty serious. She is rumored to be dating Goldman Sachs managing partner Jim Donovan. The two have allegedly been spotter out on dates in LA, where she was living until recently and now in her new city of Washington DC.
Who is Hope Hicks' boyfriend? Read on for all the details.
1. Who is Hope Hicks?
Hope Hicks is a Connecticut native who grew up around people with serious PR cred. Her father Paul Hicks, was Regional CEO, Americas of communications giant Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, then executive vice president of communications for the National Football League. He is now a managing partner at DC PR firm Glover Park Group. After graduating from Southern Methodist University, Hicks tried her hand at acting and modeling but eventually let her father use his connections to land her a PR job. She started working with Hiltzik Strategies in 2012.
2. She found her way into the Trump organization before the family got into politics.
While she was at Hilzik, Ivanka Trump was a client. Hicks worked with her on projects related to her eponymous fashion line and eventually left the firm to work at the Trump organization. Once Donald Trump met her, he was impressed with her abilities and wanted her in his own orbit. By 2015, he had already recruited her to work on his campaign. She was 25 at the time and had no prior experience in politics or campaigns. In a rare interview, she described being asked to join his nascent campaign. "Mr. Trump looked at me and said, 'I'm thinking about running for president, and you're going to be my press secretary,'" Hicks said. "I think it's the year of the outsider. Helps to have people with outsider perspective."
Hicks and Trump.
3. Not everyone is impressed with her political acumen.
While Hicks was close to Trump himself and was praised for her skill at managing him during episodes of bad news, not everyone around her thought she was there for reasons of competence. Former White House staffer and Trump detractor Omarosa Manigault Newman was less positive about her.
"Donald Trump hired her because she's pretty," Manigault Newman told reporters. "She didn't know what some of the most basic acronyms in politics meant. I said to her once, 'You know, we should look at GOTV operations, and come up with some talkers from it,' and she looked at me because she didn't know what 'get out the vote' meant," she added.
4. Hicks left the White House in 2018.
In March 2018, Hicks left the White House — though she would return to Washington to provide testimony to Congress about potential wrongdoing by the Trump administration — and took a job working at Fox Corporation as its chief communications officer and executive vice president. She was based out of Los Angeles and has been out there until announcing in early 2020 that she was returning to DC to work in the White House, this time for Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Her exit from her earlier White House gig coincided with the exit of her rumored boyfriend at the time Rob Porter. Porter, who had been another Trump adviser was forced to resign after two of his ex-wives provided evidence that he had abused them. Hicks was actually involved in doing PR damage control over that crisis. They split up at the end of 2018.
5. The new job might not be the only reason she wanted to move back east.
While a White house job is a good reason to move across the country, that might not be the only motivation for Hicks. She reportedly has a new man in her life and he's an east coast guy. Jim Donovan, who's 53, is a partner at Wall Street Giant Godman Sachs where he has worked since 1993. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Virginia School Of Law in Charlottesville.
6. Who is Hope Hicks' boyfriend? Jim Donovan is also a Trump insider.
In 2017, Trump nominated Donovan as Undersecretary of Treasury but he withdrew from consideration not long after being nominated. “I am deeply honored by President Trump’s decision to nominate me,” Mr. Donovan said at the time. “However, at this time I want to focus on my family, and I can no longer accept it. I hope to be able to serve this administration in the future and fully support President Trump and Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s ongoing work to reform the tax system and grow the U.S. economy.”
He was later appointed to serve on Trump’s Intelligence Advisory Board.
Donovan is more than 20 years older than Hicks.
7. His family situation is something out of a soap opera.
Usually, when a political nominee steps away from the spotlight for family reasons, it has to do with a spouse and kids. Donovan had a very different reason: he and his siblings have been in and out of court with their own father for years in disputes about money and real estate. At one point, John Donovan Sr. accused his son of hiring a Russian hitman to kill him. He even shot himself in the stomach to try and frame his son. In the years before that, he had also tried to frame his son for money laundering. Two of Donovan Sr.'s daughters claim he sexually abused them as children. He is no longer allowed to have any interactions with any of his now-adult children.
As for his own marriage, Donovan was married at one time to wife Christine and they have four children together.
8. Hicks and Donovan have been dating for a while.
Now Hicks and Donovan have been spotted together in both LA and DC. A source close to them told reporters "They have been seeing each other for a few months. Jim is a very smart guy, and things have been going well. She really likes him.”
Hicks probably won't break her typical silence to confirm this relationship.
Rebekah Kuschmider has been writing about celebrities, pop culture, entertainment, and politics since 2010. She is the creator of the blog FeminXer and she is a cohost of the weekly podcast The More Perfect Union.