Democrat Jennifer Granholm served as the 47th governor of Michigan from 2003 to 2011, and as the Michigan Attorney General from 1999 to 2003. She was the first woman to hold both offices.
Granholm was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, and immigrated to California with her family when she was four years old. She initially wanted a career in Hollywood, appearing on “The Dating Game” and serving as a tour guide at Universal Studios. She was also the first female tour guide at Marine World, piloting boats with 25 tourists aboard.
After becoming a naturalized United States citizen at the age of 21, Granholm abandoned her movie star aspirations and worked for John B. Anderson's 1980 presidential campaign. She was the first member of her family to go to college and attended the University of California, Berkeley, graduating with a bachelor of arts in political science and French. She then went on to earn a Juris Doctor at Harvard, and at Harvard Law School she was editor-in-chief of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, the leading progressive law journal in the United States.
After law school, Granholm clerked for Judge Damon Keith, a senior judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and worked for the 1988 Michael Dukakis presidential campaign. She became an assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan in 1991. Then, in 1995, she was appointed as corporation counsel for Wayne County, the youngest person to hold the position.
After leaving office in Michigan due to term limits, Granholm taught law and public policy at the UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy and UC Berkeley School of Law. She returned to politics in 2021, being sworn in as the 16th Secretary of Energy on February 25. She is only the second woman to lead the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
Granholm supports President Biden’s goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 by advancing clean energy technology and building an equitable clean energy future. She is also focused on reversing environmental damage caused by legacy defense programs.