She served as Senior Advisor to Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette in 2020 and later was appointed to run the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.
[1][2] Coates was born and raised in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where her father, Eugene Herr Gardner,[3] started an investment firm.
[5][8] Her blog posts were read by aides of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who later recruited Coates to work as an advisor for his book, Known and Unknown: A Memoir, published in 2011.
[12] In February 2020, it became known that Coates was leaving the White House to become a senior advisor at the Energy Department;[13][14] the transfer officially occurred a few days later.
[18] In January 2021, she was fired from the position by the acting CEO of U.S. Agency for Global Media, Kelu Chao.