Fresh off a major political win in Sarasota County, School Board Member Bridget Ziegler took a job as director of School Board Programs for the Leadership Institute. The organization has trained conservative political candidates nationwide, and boasts providing support for some 250,000 activists, leaders and students since its founding in 1979.

“Leadership Institute has trained hundreds of conservatives across the country online and in person through its school board programs; this includes 260 graduates from LI’s four in-person School Board Activism Workshops in Florida alone,” said Morton Blackwell, president and founder of the Leadership Institute. “With Bridget spearheading a big wave of more LI school board training across the United States, I look forward to seeing this trend continue throughout the country as parents take back their schools."

The position will not require a move for Ziegler, and she will retain her position on the School Board, where she won election to a third full term on Aug. 23. She said she will lead a national team based out of Sarasota. “The demand will be no different than when I held a full time executive position in the insurance industry,” she said. 

The hire comes after Ziegler established herself as a fixture on conservative cable news on political issues surrounding education, such as critical race theory. In Florida, she helped found the state chapter of Moms For Liberty, and was among a slate of candidates Gov. Ron DeSantis endorsed in a statewide push to elect more conservatives and proponents of “parents’ rights” on school boards.

Notably, Ziegler for years worked to establish an alternative to the Florida School Boards Association, and previously helped found the now-defunct Florida Coalition of School Board Members. The Leadership Institute holds a similar mission of offering training and support for conservatives who want to serve on school boards.

Ziegler dug into that topic in a Twitter thread announcing her hire.

“Too often - School Board Members run and get elected as Conservatives, but once they are in office, the only training available to them is generated from left-leaning activist organizations who label concerned parents as ‘Domestic Terrorists,’” Ziegler said. “That influence then leads to liberal group-think and even more dangerous, liberal group-policy (led by radical left special interest groups), which quickly spreads from one school district to all school districts. This ends now.”