Lolita Zinke
Lolita Zinke
Lolita "Lola" Hand Zinke is a resident of Montana. She is the wife of U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.
Early Life & Education
Lolita was born and raised in Santa Barbara, California. She is the daughter of Frederick Hand and Consuelo Castro Hand, former U.S. Consulate to Peru and a naturalized US citizen.
Lolita graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara and California Western School of Law. She worked as a bilingual felony arraignment services for the San Diego County Public Defender's Office.
Career
Lolita was an uncover operative with the California Department of Motor Vehicles in San Diego. She is now self-employed as an estate property and asset manager.
Lolita is a co-founder of the Great Northern Veterans Peace Park Foundation which created an 18 acre children’s sledding park in Whitefish, Montana. She founded the non-profit Amazon Kids to provide computers and educational services to children in the Amazon basin. Lolita has led multiple trips to the isolated parts of the Amazon and has worked to provide learning opportunities for the children there.
Lolita was paid $60,000 for her work on her husband's successful 2016 congressional campaign.
She served as President of the Freshmen Congressional Club and is "dedicated to bipartisan relationship building and charitable giving."
Lolita was a member of Donald Trump's Hispanic Outreach Committee and Women’s Outreach Committee during the 2016 campaign. Her husband was a Mitt Romney supporter, but Lola was able to bring him on board with Trump in May 2016.
Trump gave her a job on his Veteran's Administration Landing Team, which aimed to lay the groundwork for improvements to the Veterans Administration in his first 100 days.
Personal Life
In 1992, Lolita Zinke married Ryan Zinke, former Commander at SEAL Team Six and United States Secretary of the Interior. They have three adult children: Jennifer, Wolfgang, and Konrad. She has two grandchildren. [1]
She had top secret clearance on the Flag Officer staff of Admiral Jeremy Michael Boorda in London.
Lolita's daughter Jennifer graduated first in her class from US Navy Diving school and married an active duty US Navy SEAL.
During Operation Operation Iraqi Freedom, her husband, daughter, and son-in-law were simultaneously deployed overseas to the Middle East.
Zinke is a Republican.