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Wiles Accepts the Woman of Valor Award, Reflecting on Teamwork, Legacy — and Working Through a Cancer Diagnosis, May 7, 2026

May 7, 2026 · Independent Women · 0:32:22

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What happened

Independent Women presented its Barbara K. Olson Woman of Valor Award to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles at its awards gala on Thursday, May 7, 2026, per the organization’s description of the event. The embedded recording is the gala program; Wiles’s on-stage conversation falls in its latter portion, after chairman Heather Higgins’s presentation remarks, in a room Higgins noted included Secretaries Hegseth, Blanche, Burgum and Wright, FCC Chairman Carr and FBI Director Patel among the administration officials in attendance, as she introduced them.

In the conversation, Wiles told the origin story of her service to President Trump: after she ran his Florida operation in 2020, he invited her to dinner at Mar-a-Lago, read the after-action report she wrote for him, and, as she was leaving, asked her to take over a political action committee he thought had money in it — “you can do it in your free time… get it done in a week or so. And I did. So, here I am.” Asked whether the campaign’s McDonald’s stop and garbage-truck ride were the President’s ideas, she credited the team: the McDonald’s visit “just sells itself — he eats it every single day,” and the garbage truck was staff work as well. The lesson she said she wished she had known earlier was the full extent of teamwork: “what you can do if you have good people around you, you don’t want to get any credit and you just want to put the best product out that you possibly can.” Asked how she hopes to be remembered, she said: “somebody who was predictable, steady, considerate of everybody — the people that work with me and the people that maybe oppose me.” She also disclosed her health plainly: “I got a cancer diagnosis nine weeks ago, and I come to work every day. I do my job. I don’t complain. And I think that sets an example, too, for the people I work with.” Her recharge, she said, is walking wherever she is, with an eclectic playlist whose most recent song dates to about 2000.

Why it matters

The gala conversation is Wiles’s fullest public reflection of 2026: the team-first doctrine she runs the White House on, stated as career advice; the legacy terms she chose for herself; and a cancer disclosure made not in a statement but on a stage, framed by her as an example to her staff. Independent Women’s award — named for Barbara K. Olson — is also a marker of her standing with the conservative women’s movement whose midterm role she had described the previous December.

Sources: Independent Women, “2026 Independent Women Awards Gala: Chief of Staff Susie Wiles Receives the Woman of Valor Award” (gala held May 7, 2026; recording published May 19, 2026, embedded above; remarks as delivered at the gala).