Blaise Hazelwood, a Republican strategist and consultant in the United States, is the owner of Grassroots Targeting, LLC, a microtargeting company. Hazelwood first came to prominence as the driver behind the “72-Hour Task Force” in 2001, the party’s last major revision to its tactical campaign playbook which is credited with revolutionizing the Get Out the Vote efforts. Hazelwood has led and managed political operations, high-profile grassroots programs and political campaigns, including multiple winning campaigns for Chairman of the Republican National Committee. She received praise for her work as Political Director at the Republican National Committee in 2002 and 2004, spearheading their online Team Leader program and the construction of Voter Vault, the RNC’s voter file database. She went on to serve as the Director of Media and Political operations for the National Republican Senatorial Committee during the 2006 cycle under Senator Elizabeth Dole. In 2008, Hazelwood managed Michael Steele's successful campaign for Chairman of the Republican National Committee. Hazelwood followed the new Chairman to the RNC and served as his Chief of Staff through the transition until March 2009. She then returned full-time to her company in Alexandria, Virginia but continued consulting as a top advisor to Chairman Steele and the RNC until she left in mid-2010. Early years Hazelwood's whole life has been politics. She is a fifth-generation Arizonan whose grandfather was close to former senator Barry M. Goldwater. She was president of Teen Republicans in Arizona as well as an intern on Capitol Hill and at the White House. Despite her Arizona lineage, however, she was born in Washington because her father was working at the Interior Department during the Nixon administration. She was named for St. Blaise. The name was chosen by her mother, who wrote a dissertation on the Roman Catholic saint while studying for a doctorate in early Christian art at Georgetown University. Hazelwood has admitted that being named after a little-known male saint caused confusion when she was younger. Arizona Campaigning Hazelwood began door-to-door canvassing as a 10-year-old in Arizona when her father was running for Precinct Committeeman, and she learned firsthand the value of human contact, meticulous organization and volunteer muscle in political campaigns. Her grandmother was a campaign volunteer in the days before computers, when voter files were kept on index cards. She told the Washington Post in 2003, "I always heard stories about my grandmother. It was all personal contact, and