Staff Bios

Molly O'Rourke

Molly O’Rourke is a senior vice president with Hart Research and has been with the company for more than ten years. In that capacity, she has conducted quantitative and qualitative research projects for a variety of nonprofit organizations, corporations, political candidates, labor unions, and media organizations, including NBC News and The Wall Street Journal, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Children’s Defense Fund, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic National Committee’s 2004 independent expenditure in the 2004 presidential campaign.

Ms. O’Rourke has a special interest in women and politics and conducts ongoing research for EMILY’s List as one of the lead pollsters for its Women Vote program and other special projects aimed at better understanding distinctive trends in the women’s electorate. She also has assisted with and directed the polling for several women candidates for federal and state offices.

Before joining Hart Research, Ms. O’Rourke worked as an aide to Senator Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ), as an assistant to the president of EMILY’s List, the women’s political action committee, and also for the Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute. For several years, she co-wrote a monthly column about politics and public opinion titled “Behind The Numbers” for The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper. She has guest lectured on research and communications at Duke University, Brown University, and the University of Pennsylvania and she currently teaches a graduate course in Communications and Research Methodology at Johns Hopkins University.

Ms. O’Rourke graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude from Brown University and holds a master’s degree from the University of Michigan, where she was awarded a Kellogg Foundation Fellowship. She and her husband have two children.