Hillary Clinton

During the 1992 presidential campaign, Hillary Rodham Clinton observed, “Our lives are a mixture of different roles. Most of us are doing the best we can to find whatever the right balance is....For me, that balance is family, work, and service.”

Hillary Diane Rodham, Dorothy and Hugh Rodham’s first child, was born in Chicago on October 26, 1947, and raised in suburban Park Ridge, Illinois. Life for the Rodhams was comfortable, centered in family, friends, school, and the Methodist church. Hillary’s parents expected her to study hard, and she was a student leader in high school. After a youth minister took her to hear Martin Luther King Jr. speak in Chicago, she began to have a wider view of the world.

As an undergraduate at Wellesley College, Hillary combined academic excellence with service in student government. Speaking at graduation, she told her classmates, “The challenge now is to practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible, possible.” She enrolled in Yale Law School, where she served on the Board of Editors of the Yale Review of Law and Social Action, interned with children’s advocate Marian Wright Edelman, and met William Jefferson Clinton.

After graduation, Hillary Rodham advised the Children’s Defense Fund in Cambridge and joined the impeachment inquiry staff advising the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives. Then she “followed her heart to Arkansas,” where Bill had begun his political career. They married on October 11, 1975. She joined the faculty of the University of Arkansas Law School, and in 1978, President Jimmy Carter appointed her to the board of the Legal Services Corporation. Bill Clinton was elected governor of Arkansas, and in 1980 their daughter, Chelsea, was born. For twelve years, as Arkansas’s first lady, Hillary balanced family, law, and public service. Then Bill was elected president.

As the nation’s first lady, Mrs. Clinton chaired the Task Force on National Health Care Reform. Never before had a first lady been so directly involved in public policy. She led the fight to pass the Children’s Health Insurance Program; worked to increase funding for research and treatment of cancer, AIDS, osteoporosis, and juvenile diabetes; chaired Save America’s Treasures; and supported gun control efforts. She wrote two best-selling books and won a Grammy award for her recording of It Takes a Village and Other Lessons Children Teach Us.

In 2000 Hillary was elected senator from New York, and her work in health, education, aging, and the environment gained her national reputation in her own right. In 2007 she ran for president. After a hard-fought primary she lost the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama but quickly supported his candidacy. When he was elected, he named her secretary of state. For four years Hillary traveled the world on behalf of U.S. interests.

In 2015 Hillary Clinton launched her second presidential campaign and in July 2016 became the first woman in American history to receive the presidential nomination of a major political party. That fall, she received more than 65 million votes but ultimately lost the Electoral Collect to Republican nominee Donald J. Trump.