Chelsea Clinton

Early life

Chelsea Victoria Clinton was born in Little Rock, Arkansas on February 27, 1980. She is the only child of Hillary and Bill Clinton. Her name was inspired by a visit to the Chelsea neighborhood of London during a Christmas 1978 vacation. Hillary said that upon hearing the 1969 Judy Collins recording of the Joni Mitchell song "Chelsea Morning", Bill remarked, "If we ever have a daughter, her name should be Chelsea".

When Clinton was two years old, she accompanied her parents as they campaigned throughout Arkansas for her father's gubernatorial race. She learned to read and write at a very young age. Clinton claims that she started reading the newspaper by the age of three and also wrote a letter to President Ronald Reagan when she was only five. In the letter, which was photocopied and preserved by her father, she asked President Reagan not to visit a military cemetery in West Germany that includes graves of Nazi soldiers. Clinton attended Forest Park Elementary School, Booker Arts and Science Magnet Elementary School and Horace Mann Junior High School, both Little Rock public schools. She skipped the third grade. In 1992, Clinton's father was first elected president, and she remained active at school right until the family's move to Washington, playing the Ghost of Christmas Past in her school's production of A Christmas Carol and dancing in Little Rock's production of The Nutcracker. As a young child, Clinton was raised in her father's Southern Baptist faith.

Education and academic life

Stanford University

Clinton entered Stanford University in the fall of 1997. The week before she arrived on campus, her mother published an open letter in her syndicated column asking journalists to leave her daughter alone. Chelsea arrived at Stanford in a motorcade with her parents, Secret Service agents, and almost 250 journalists. For her security, bullet-proof glass was installed in her dorm windows and surveillance cameras were placed in hallways. Secret Service agents in plain clothes lived in her dorm. With the exception of an occasional tabloid story written about her, Chelsea's four years at Stanford remained out of public view.

Clinton obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in history, with highest honors, at Stanford in 2001. The topic of her 167-page senior thesis was the 1998 Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland.

In 2003, Clinton joined the consulting firm McKinsey & Company in New York City. She began working for Avenue Capital Group in late 2006. She has served on the board of the School of American Ballet and on IAC's board of directors. In March 2017, Clinton was named to the board of directors of Expedia Group.

Starting in 2010, Clinton began serving as Assistant Vice-Provost for the Global Network University of New York University (NYU), working on international recruitment strategies. She is the co-founder of the Of Many Institute for Multifaith Leadership at NYU and serves as its co-chair.

In November 2011, NBC hired Clinton as a special correspondent. One of her roles was reporting stories about "Making a Difference" for NBC Nightly News and Rock Center with Brian Williams. Clinton received a three-month contract that allowed her to continue working for the Clinton Foundation and to pursue her education. The hiring "was met with cries of nepotism". Despite Clinton's lack of prior experience in broadcasting or journalism, she reportedly was hired at an annual salary of $600,000 before shifting to a month-to-month contract in 2014. During the period when she was making $600,000 per year, Clinton reportedly received approximately $26,724 for each minute that she was on the air.

Clinton's first appearance on NBC occurred on the December 12, 2011 episode of Rock Center. Following her debut, Hank Steuver of the Washington Post commented, "'Either we’re spoiled by TV’s unlimited population of giant personalities or this woman is one of the most boring people of her era'". Although she received some unfavorable reviews for her work, Clinton's contract with NBC was renewed in February 2012. In April 2013, Clinton conducted an interview with the GEICO gecko. Rock Center ended in May 2013, and she left the network in August 2014.

Clinton began teaching graduate classes at the Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University in 2012.

In a 2014 interview, Clinton said, "'I’ve tried really hard to care about things that were very different from my parents. I was curious if I could care about [money] on some fundamental level, and I couldn’t. That wasn’t the metric of success I wanted in my life'".

In 2020, Clinton co-founded Metrodora Ventures, a venture capital fund.

In April 2021, Clinton launched In Fact with Chelsea Clinton, a podcast on iHeartMedia's iHeartPodcast network.

Children's non-fiction

In September 2015, Clinton's first children's book, It's Your World: Get Informed, Get Inspired and Get Going!, was published by Philomel Books. The 400-page book is aimed at middle school students (ages 10 to 14) and introduces them to a range of social issues, encouraging them to take action to make the world a better place. The paperback edition was published by Puffin Books in 2017.

In May 2017, her second children's book, She Persisted: 13 American Women Who Changed the World, illustrated by Alexandra Boiger, was published by Philomel Books. Upon its release, the book became a bestseller, reaching No. 1 on The New York Times Children's Picture Books Best Sellers list on July 30, 2017. In 2019, she worked with the Berkeley, California's Bay Area Children's Theater in adapting the book into a musical play, She Persisted: The Musical, which ran from January to March.

In 2018, Clinton wrote a companion book featuring women around the world entitled She Persisted Around the World: 13 Women Who Changed History. The book debuted at No. 2 on the Times' Children's Picture Books Best Sellers list.

Clinton's fourth children's book, Start Now!: You Can Make a Difference, was published by Philomel in 2018. It is aimed at empowering young would-be activists aged seven to ten, addressing themes ranging from bullying to climate change to endangered species. In interviews, she talked about how she drew on her personal experiences and strategies for dealing with bullies growing up and as an adult.

In 2019, Clinton published her fifth children's book, Don't Let Them Disappear: 12 Endangered Species Across the Globe. The book, illustrated by Gianna Marino, is about endangered animals and is aimed at teaching children aged four to eight about species in need of protection.

Clinton continued her children's "She Persisted" series in 2020 with She Persisted in Sports: American Olympians Who Changed the Game, also published by Philomel. Again illustrated by Alexandra Boiger, this chapter book celebrates women in sports who broke records and smashed barriers with their persistence.

Clinton Foundation

Since 2011, Clinton has taken a prominent role at the family's Clinton Foundation and has had a seat on its board. When she joined in 2013, the foundation was renamed the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. She served as co-chair for a fundraising week for the Foundation, subsequently becoming the foundation's Vice Chair. As part of her work with the Foundation, Clinton gives paid speeches; her speaking fees go directly to the foundation, whose goals relate to improving global health, creating opportunities for women, and promoting economic growth. She focuses on early brain and language development through the Too Small to Fail initiative and supports female entrepreneurs through the Women in Renewable Energy Network.

Hillary Clinton 2008 presidential campaign

In December 2007, Clinton began campaigning in Iowa in support of her mother's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. She appeared across the country, largely on college campuses. By early April 2008, she had spoken at 100 colleges on behalf of her mother's candidacy.

While campaigning, Clinton answered audience questions but did not give interviews or respond to press questions, including one from a nine-year-old Scholastic News reporter asking whether her father would be a good "first man". She replied, "I'm sorry, I don't talk to the press and that applies to you, unfortunately. Even though I think you're cute." Philippe Reines, her mother's press secretary, intervened when the press attempted to approach Chelsea directly.

When MSNBC reporter David Shuster characterized Clinton's participation in her mother's campaign as "sort of being pimped out", the Clinton campaign objected. Shuster subsequently apologized on-air and was suspended for two weeks.

The first time she was asked about her mother's handling of the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal at a campaign stop Clinton responded, "I do not think that is any of your business." As she became a more experienced campaigner, she refined her responses and deflected questions on the issue with comments such as, "If that's what you want to vote on, that's what you should vote on. But I think there are other people [who are] going to vote on things like healthcare and economics."

Hillary Clinton conceded the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination to Barack Obama on June 7, 2008.

At the 2008 Democratic National Convention, Chelsea called Hillary "my hero and my mother" and introduced her with a long video tribute.