Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton is an American politician, attorney, and diplomat whose four-decade career has produced multiple defining American political roles — particularly her 1993–2001 service as the First Lady of the United States, her 2001–2009 service as the U.S. Senator for New York, her 2009–2013 service as the 67th U.S. Secretary of State, and her 2016 status as the first female major-party-candidate nominee for the U.S. Presidency. She was born Hillary Diane Rodham on October 26, 1947, in Chicago, Illinois, into a Republican-Methodist working-class family. Her father Hugh Ellsworth Rodham was an English-Welsh-American Chicago-area textile-supply business owner, and her mother Dorothy Emma Howell was a homemaker.

Her education at Wellesley College (B.A. in Political Science, 1969) and Yale Law School (J.D., 1973) launched her early-career path. Her 1973 Yale Law School graduation alongside her future husband Bill Clinton (whom she married in 1975) and her subsequent 1974 House Judiciary Committee impeachment-investigation staff position (across the Watergate-era investigation of President Richard Nixon) launched her early-career American political-and-legal public profile.

Her 1976 relocation to Little Rock, Arkansas (alongside her husband Bill Clinton's 1976 Arkansas Attorney General campaign) and her subsequent 1979–1992 first First-Lady-of-Arkansas tenure (across Bill Clinton's 1979–1981 and 1983–1992 Arkansas Governor service) launched her 1980s American political public profile.

Her January 20, 1993 first First-Lady-of-the-United-States tenure across 1993–2001 (across Bill Clinton's 1993–2001 U.S. Presidency) — and her 1993–1994 healthcare-reform-effort leadership (across the unsuccessful Clinton healthcare reform of 1993) — produced her 1990s American political public profile.

Her November 7, 2000 New York U.S. Senate election victory and her subsequent January 3, 2001–January 21, 2009 service as the U.S. Senator for New York launched her 2000s American political public profile. Her January 21, 2009 nomination as the 67th U.S. Secretary of State under President Barack Obama and her subsequent January 21, 2009–February 1, 2013 service as the U.S. Secretary of State produced her late-2000s and early-2010s American political-and-diplomatic public profile.

Her 2008 first Democratic Party presidential primary campaign (which she lost to Barack Obama) and her subsequent 2016 second Democratic Party presidential primary campaign (across which she became the first female major-party-candidate nominee for the U.S. Presidency on July 26, 2016) — and her subsequent November 8, 2016 general-election defeat by Donald Trump — produced her 2010s American political public profile. She has been married to former U.S. President Bill Clinton since 1975. They have one daughter, Chelsea Clinton.

Her name Hillary derives from the Latin Hilarius meaning "cheerful." Hillary was a popular American girls' name through the 1980s.