Stephanie Winston Wolkoff

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, born Stephanie Batinkoff on January 21, 1971, is an American fashion and entertainment executive and a former senior advisor to First Lady Melania Trump. Before entering politics, she produced major New York events like the Met Gala and helped start Lincoln Center’s Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week.

She was raised in the Catskills by Barbara Carnel and Barry Batinkoff and comes from a Jewish family. Her brother is actor Randall Batinkoff. She played NCAA basketball at Fordham University before transferring to Loyola University New Orleans, where she earned a degree in communications.

Wolkoff’s early career included lobbying for Sotheby’s and working with concert promoter Ron Delsener. In 1996 she joined Vogue as a public relations manager, helping organize the VH1 Fashion Awards and the Met Gala. She briefly resigned in 2010 but was rehired by Anna Wintour as fashion director for New York Fashion Week.

She met Melania Knauss (Donald Trump’s future wife) in 2003 while at Vogue, and they became friends. Wolkoff attended the Trump wedding and Melania’s baby shower, and she has said Melania felt like “the sister I never had.”

In 2016, Wolkoff started WIS Media Partners, an event-planning firm that helped organize Donald Trump’s 2017 inauguration. The firm was paid about $26 million, a large portion of the inauguration’s expenses, with much of the money going to other vendors and staff.

She served as an unpaid senior advisor to Melania Trump at the start of the Trump administration, but Melania cut ties with her in February 2018. Wolkoff resigned after it became clear how much her firm was paid, saying she was scapegoated and that only about $1.6 million of the $26 million went to her personally.

In 2020 she published Melania and Me, a tell-all about her White House experiences, including many direct quotes from Melania. The book came after Wolkoff had secretly recorded some conversations.

The Justice Department briefly sued Wolkoff in 2019 over a nondisclosure agreement, but the case was dropped in 2021.

Wolkoff’s personal life includes being adopted by her mother’s second husband, Bruce Winston, after her parents’ divorce. She married real estate developer David Wolkoff in 2000, and they have three children.