Carla Sands

Sands was born Carla J. Herd, daughter of Jack (a chiropractor)^[8] and Barbara Herd, on October 13, 1960. She grew up in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. Sands attended Cumberland Valley High School, where she was active in student council, the ski club, and various other student-led organizations.^[9] She studied art and science at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and chemistry at Elizabethtown College, but it is unclear whether she earned a degree from either institution.^[10] She later attended Life Chiropractic College, now Life University, and earned a Doctor of Chiropractic degree.^[11][6][12]

Sands had a brief career in acting in the 1980s,^[2] appearing in several episodes of the television series The Bold and the Beautiful in 1987^[13][14] and in two movies, the 1988 sword and sorcery fantasy film Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell and the 1989 South African action film Wild Zone.^[15]

Sands worked as a chiropractor in private practice from 1990 to 1999. On April 10, 1999, Sands married real estate mogul Fred Sands. Following his death in 2015, she succeeded him as the chair and CEO of Vintage Capital Group, which has around $150 million in assets, and of Vintage Real Estate.^[12][16]

Sands is a Republican fundraiser and donor; she supported the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump.^{[6][17][18][19]} In 2016, she donated nearly a quarter-million dollars and organized high-dollar fundraisers for Trump's campaign, and subsequently gave $100,000 to Trump's inaugural committee.^{[1][6][7][20]} Sands was previously an economic advisor to Trump; one of eight women that Trump added to his economic advisory council.^[5][20][7]

Sands was a California delegate for the 33rd congressional district to the 2016 Republican National Convention.^[6][21]

Several days after the 2020 presidential election, concerned about voter disenfranchisement, Sands wrote twice on Twitter that, according to Pennsylvania Department of State online voting records, her absentee ballot in Pennsylvania appeared not to have been counted. The New York Times, which later ran a search on Pennsylvania's election website with Sands's information, reported that the website had been updated and that her ballot had been received and counted in Cumberland County, admitting that "is unclear when that information on the website was updated."^[22]

Trump nominated Sands to the post of U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Denmark.^[23][24] She was confirmed by the United States Senate on November 2, 2017, on a voice vote.^[25][26] She formally assumed the office on December 15, 2017.

While serving as Ambassador, Sands published an opinion piece in Denmark arguing that the country of spent too little on its military.^[27]

In December 2019, she vetoed the presence of Stanley Sloan, a scholar of the NATO alliance, at a subsequently canceled Danish Atlantic Council conference regarding the 70th anniversary of NATO. Sloan had been invited by the head of the council, Lars Struwe, to give the keynote address at the conference.^[28][28][29] The U.S. Embassy posted a Twitter message saying that the "proposed last-minute inclusion" of Sloan into the conference did not comply with the "agreement that we followed when recruiting all other speakers."^[30][28]

In June 2020, Sands participated in re-opening the United States consulate in Nuuk, Greenland, along with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.^[31]

The Office of Special Counsel ruled in February 2021, after Sands had left the role, that she potentially violated the Hatch Act of 1939 while serving as Ambassador to the Kingdom of Denmark by using her Twitter account to, in its view, tweet criticisms of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.^[32]

During Trump's last month in office, Sands received the Medal for Distinguished Public Service from the Department of Defense for her tenure as Ambassador.^[33]

In June 2022, Sands tweeted, in reference to high fuel prices, that "In Denmark, middle class people can’t afford to drive a car. They have a bike and take the train for long trips. My embassy driver would bike an hour in the snow to get to work. That’s the future team Biden wants for Americans”, she wrote and continued: “Is this what you want?"^[34][35]

In July 2021, Sands announced she was entering the Republican primary for the Senate seat of Pat Toomey.^[36] As of January 2022, Sands had put $3 million of her own money into her U.S. Senate campaign and had spent $1 million on television advertisements.^[37] Sands came in fourth in the primary, behind Mehmet Oz, David McCormick, and Kathy Barnette.^[38]

Sands served on the boards of Pepperdine University, the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Library Foundation of Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.^[6] She was also named by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to be on the board of the California Cultural and Historical Endowment.^[5][6] Sands served as the President and Chairman of Blue Ribbon, an organization that supports the Los Angeles Music Center and also as a Director of the Performing Arts Center of Los Angeles County.^[6][39][40]

Sands has one child, a daughter named Alexandra.^[41]