Hillary Clinton summary

Hillary Clinton, orig. Hillary Diane Rodham, (born Oct. 26, 1947, Chicago, Ill., U.S.), U.S. lawyer, first lady, and politician. She attended Wellesley College and Yale Law School, from which she graduated first in her class. Her early professional interests focused on family law and children’s rights. In 1975 she married her Yale classmate Bill Clinton, and she became first lady of Arkansas on his election as governor in 1979. She was twice named one of America’s 100 most influential lawyers by the National Law Journal. When her husband became president (1993), she wielded power and influence almost unprecedented for a first lady. As head of the Task Force on National Health Care Reform, she proposed the first national health-care program in the U.S. but saw the initiative defeated. In 2000 she was elected to the U.S. Senate from New York, thereby becoming the first wife of a president to win elective office; she was reelected in 2006. Clinton sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 but lost the closely contested race to Barack Obama. From 2009 to 2013 she served as secretary of state in President Obama’s administration, and she was widely praised for improving U.S. foreign relationships during her tenure. Clinton later ran in the 2016 presidential election and was named the Democratic nominee, with Sen. Tim Kaine as her running mate. She was the first woman to top the presidential ticket of a major party in the U.S., but she was defeated by Republican nominee Donald Trump.