Janet Napolitano

She was the first woman and the 23rd person to serve in that office.

Napolitano had earlier served as the United States attorney for the District of Arizona.

She has been the first woman to serve in several offices, including attorney general of Arizona, secretary of homeland security, and president of the University of California.

Janet Ann Napolitano (born November 29, 1957) is an American politician, lawyer, and academic administrator.

Janet Napolitano was born on November 29, 1957, in New York City, the daughter of Jane Marie (née Winer) and Leonard Michael Napolitano, who was the dean of the University of New Mexico School of Medicine.

Her father was of Italian descent and her mother had German and Austrian ancestry.

Her grandfather was named Filippo Napolitano.

Napolitano is a Methodist.

She is the oldest of three children, with a younger brother and sister.

She was raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and also in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she graduated from Sandia High School in 1975.

In 1978, she studied for a term at the London School of Economics as part of Santa Clara's exchange program through IES Abroad.

She then went to the University of Virginia School of Law after which she served as a law clerk for Judge Mary M. Schroeder of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, then joined Schroeder's former firm, Lewis and Roca, in Phoenix.

Napolitano received a Bachelor of Science summa cum laude with a major in political science from Santa Clara University in 1979 and a Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia in 1983.

Napolitano was Santa Clara's first female valedictorian, a Truman Scholar, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

After graduation, she worked as an analyst for the United States Senate Committee on the Budget.

She was also the first Democrat popularly elected to the governorship since Bruce Babbitt left office in 1987, and the first female governor of Arizona to be elected outright.

She was named a partner of the firm in 1989.

In 1991, while a partner at Lewis and Roca LLP, Napolitano served as an attorney for Anita Hill.

Hill testified in the U.S. Senate that then U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her ten years earlier when she was his subordinate at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

In 1993, Napolitano was appointed by President Bill Clinton as United States attorney for the District of Arizona.

As U.S. attorney, she was involved in the investigation of Michael Fortier of Kingman, Arizona, in connection with the Oklahoma City bombing.

She ran for and won the position of Arizona attorney general in 1998.

During her tenure as attorney general, she focused on consumer protection issues and improving general law enforcement.

Prior to her election as governor, she served as attorney general of Arizona from 1999 to 2003.

While serving as attorney general, she spoke at the 2000 Democratic National Convention just three weeks after having a mastectomy.

Napolitano recalled that the pain was so unbearable that she could not stand up.

"Work and family helped me focus on other things while I battled the cancer," says Napolitano.

"I am very grateful for all the support I had from family, friends and Arizonans."

In 2002, Napolitano narrowly won the gubernatorial election with 46 percent of the vote, succeeding Republican Jane Dee Hull and defeating her Republican opponent, former congressman Matt Salmon, who received 45 percent of the vote.

She was Arizona's third female governor and the first female elected governor in the United States to succeed another elected female governor.

She spoke at the 2004 Democratic Convention, where some initially considered her to be a possible running mate for presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election.

Kerry selected Senator John Edwards instead.

In November 2005, Time magazine named her one of the five best governors in the U.S.

As Governor, Napolitano set records for total number of vetoes issued.

In 2008, she was listed by The New York Times as one of the women most likely to become the first female president of the United States.

Napolitano also sits on the bipartisan advisory board of States United Democracy Center.

Forbes ranked her as the world's ninth most powerful woman in 2012 and eighth most powerful woman in 2013.

She served as president of the University of California from 2013 to 2020, the United States secretary of homeland security from 2009 to 2013 (during the administration of President Barack Obama), and the governor of Arizona from 2003 to 2009.

She was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2018.

She joined the faculty at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley in 2020.