Susan Dryden Whitson was press secretary to First Lady Laura Bush, the wife of U.S. President George W. Bush. During the attacks of September 11th, she was flying from Washington to Milwaukee with Attorney General John Ashcroft. Prior to working at the White House, she was the Deputy Communications Director of the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign and the spokesperson for the President and Mrs. Bush's twin daughters, Barbara and Jenna Bush. Susan Whitson also worked for the FBI, the US Department of Justice and for Rep. Bob Riley (R-AL), the former governor of Alabama, and Rep. Bill McCollum (R-FL) on Capitol Hill. She was a high school English teacher at Hoover High School in Birmingham, Alabama. She attended Auburn University.