Meet Sandra Whitehouse, whose husband’s votes funneled millions into NGO that pays her

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., has emerged into the spotlight amid a new ethics complaint due to his voting in favor of laws that ultimately funded millions in grants to a nonprofit climate group that pays his wife’s consulting firm. 

But who is his wife, Sandra Whitehouse? 

Whitehouse earned her bachelor’s degree at Yale University, similar to her now-senator husband, according to her LinkedIn page. 

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Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s wife, Sandra Whitehouse, has long worked with, and been compensated by, a nonprofit that got millions in federal funds from legislation that he backed.  (Reuters)

After that, she earned her master’s degree at the Graduate School of Oceanography at the University of Rhode Island, studying there from 1986 to 1994.

She and Sheldon Whitehouse married in 1986 at the St. George’s School Chapel in Newport, Rhode Island, according to a newspaper announcement. 

The couple live in Newport and have two children, Molly and Alexander, as well as two grandchildren, according to the senator’s website.

Throughout her career, Whitehouse has advised nonprofits, nongovernmental organizations, a state agency, a legislative body and private companies, according to a biography from the Atlantic Council, where she was a nonresident senior fellow at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

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The couple live in Newport. (Jonathan Wiggs/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

Her husband was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006. She first began working for the group at the center of the latest ethics complaint roughly two years later, in 2008. 

Whitehouse started working for Ocean Conservancy in September 2008, according to her LinkedIn page. She served as a senior policy advisor, and her “consulting work includes providing strategic advice for the Executive Team and Program Directors, raising awareness of ocean policy issues at various workshops and conferences, and engaging key stakeholders in Ocean Conservancy’s mission. Areas of policy focus include climate change, ocean plastics, and ocean planning.”

Whitehouse is no longer directly employed by Ocean Conservancy, but the organization does pay her firm, Ocean Wonks LLC, for similar consulting. 

She became president of Ocean Wonks LLC in 2017, and in this capacity, she “consults for various non-profit organizations, leveraging decades of scientific, regulatory, and policy experience to educate on and advocate for ocean policy issues,” according to her LinkedIn.

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Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse is being accused of a potential conflict of interest by an ethics watchdog.  (Getty Images)

Ocean Conservancy has notably received more than $14.2 million in federal grants since 2008, according to USASpending.gov. It was given two sizable grants in just 2024, one for $5.2 million from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and another for $1.7 million from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), both for marine debris cleanup. The former was funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), and the latter was funded through the EPA’s annual appropriations bill. The senator voted for both.

According to tax documents, Ocean Conservancy has paid Whitehouse a total of $2,686,800 either directly or through her firm since 2010. 

This was cited in last month’s complaint to the Senate Select Committee on Ethics Chairman James Lankford, R-Okla., and Vice Chairman Chris Coons, D-Del., from ethics watchdog the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT). 

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Whitehouse has become known as a climate hawk.  (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)

In a statement to Fox News Digital, Whitehouse spokesperson Stephen DeLeo said, “This is a repeat dark money performance, and the previous attempt by a dark money group to plant these same smears was roundly dismissed by Senate Ethics. The billionaires and Supreme Court capture operatives behind FACT would like to try to stop Senator Whitehouse from shining a light on what they’ve done to deprive regular people of a fair shake before the Court.”

“But false accusations from far-right special interests and billionaires will not impede the Senator’s pursuit of an accountable, ethical government that responds to Americans’ needs,” he added.

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Whitehouse’s office also provided a letter to Fox News Digital from the committee last year informing another watchdog group, Judicial Watch, that the senator’s actions did not violate “federal laws, Senate rules, or other standards of conduct.” 

The group had filed a similar ethics complaint to FACT.