Virginia Knauer

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Virginia Harrington Knauer (née Wright) (b. March 28, 1915) is a former U.S. politician. She was the first woman elected to the Philadelphia City Council, and chief consumer advisor to Pennsylvania Governor Raymond P. Shafer, then to Presidents Richard Nixon (she was the first to hold the post of U.S. Consumer Advocate) and Gerald Ford (1969-1977) and later to Ronald Reagan (1981-1983). She is also the mentor, and a good friend of North Carolina Senior Senator Elizabeth Dole.

Elizabeth Dole with friend and mentor Virginia Knauer. Mrs. Knauer ran the White House Office of Consumer Affairs in the Nixon Administration where Sen. Dole served as a Deputy Assistant to the President.

In 1966, she moved to Washington, DC as a Democrat working on issues concerning the handicapped^{[citation needed]}. Dole, who had campaigned for the Kennedy-Johnson presidential ticket in 1960, worked in the White House in the latter years of the administration of Lyndon Johnson.

She was born and grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where her father was a professor of accounting at Temple University. She was educated at the Philadelphia High School for Girls, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the University of Pennsylvania (graduated 1937); she also attended the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, Italy. Her late husband, Wilhelm F. Knauer, a lawyer, served as Deputy Attorney of Pennsylvania. They had one son, Judge Wilhelm F. Knauer, Jr. (deceased), one daughter, Valerie Knauer Burden, and three granddaughters, Virginia Burden, Francis Burden, and Nancy J. Knauer.