MOSCOW (Sputnik) — On Sunday, former First Lady and ex-Secretary Of State Hillary Clinton announced her 2016 presidential campaign.
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton was born on October 26, 1947 in Chicago, Illinois. She graduated from Wellesley College in 1969 and from Yale Law School in 1973, with a degree of Doctor of Law. At Yale, she met her future husband, Bill Clinton.
As a young woman, Hillary was an active member of the Republican party's youth wing but later changed her political affiliation.
In 1972, Hillary Clinton worked for the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern.
After graduating from law school, she served on the board of the Children's Defense Fund, and in 1974 she became a member of the presidential impeachment inquiry staff, advising the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives.
She then moved to Arkansas, where Bill Clinton had started his political career. They married in 1975.
The same year, Hillary joined the faculty of the University of Arkansas Law School. In 1976 she joined the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, and was appointed to the board of the Legal Services Corporation by President Carter in 1978, a position she held until 1981.
In 1978, following her husband's successful bid for governorship, Clinton became the first lady of Arkansas. Later that year she also became a partner in the Rose Law Firm.
After becoming First Lady of the United States following Bill Clinton's victory in the 1992 presidential election, Hillary, at her husband's request, headed the Task Force on National Health Reform in 1993.
During the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal in 1998, which almost led to Bill Clinton's impeachment, Hillary publicly supported her husband and did not leave her marriage.
On November 7, 2000, Hillary Clinton was elected the US Senator from New York and won re-election in 2006.
On January 20, 2007, Clinton announced that she would seek the Democratic Party nomination in the 2008 presidential election. Her main rival was Senator Barack Obama.
Senator Clinton conceded the nomination after Barack Obama secured a majority of delegates in the 2008 Democratic primaries.
Shortly after Obama won the presidential election, he nominated Clinton to become Secretary of State in his Cabinet. She accepted the nomination, and was officially confirmed by the Senate on January 21, 2009.
On February 1, 2013, she resigned as Secretary of State.
Hillary Clinton is the author of the book "It Takes a Village and Other Lessons Children Teach Us" (1996). In 1997, she won a Grammy for the audio book.
She has also published two memoirs, Living History (2003) and Hard Choices (2014).
Bill and Hillary Clinton have a daughter, Chelsea, born in 1980, who married investment banker Marc Mezvinsky in 2010.
