Nancy-Ann DeParle

Nancy-Ann Min was born in Cleveland, Ohio, to a Chinese immigrant father and a Euro-American mother. Raised in Rockwood, Tennessee, she graduated from Rockwood High School. Her mother died of lung cancer when Nancy-Ann was 17.

She attended the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where her major was history and her senior thesis was entitled "Uncle Sam, Hirohito, and Resegregation: The Tule Lake Segregation Center, 1943-1946." She was awarded a B.A. degree with highest honors and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and selected as a Phi Kappa Phi scholar. She was the first female president of the University of Tennessee student body and was a member of the Gamma Alpha chapter of Delta Gamma. In 1978 Glamour magazine named her one of the year's top ten college women.

After graduating from Tennessee, she enrolled in Harvard Law School, but interrupted her studies there when she was awarded a Rhodes scholarship. As a Rhodes scholar, she went to Balliol College of Oxford University, receiving a B.A. from Oxford in 1981. After returning to Harvard, she earned a J.D. degree in 1983.

She is married to Jason DeParle, a reporter for The New York Times. They have two sons.

DeParle was a partner at the law firm of Bass, Berry & Sims in Nashville before serving as commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Human Services in the cabinet of Governor Ned McWherter from 1987 to 1989.

DeParle has also served as a trustee at the nonprofit Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a research fellow at Harvard Kennedy School at Harvard University, and a fellow at the Wharton School of Business. She has also been a Commissioner on the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC). In November 2011, DeParle was included on The New Republic's list of Washington's most powerful, least famous people.

Corporate connections

She served as a director of Accredo Health Inc., Boston Scientific, Cerner, DaVita Inc., Guidant, Medco Health Solutions, Speciality Laboratories, and Triad Hospitals. She was a managing director of CCMP Capital.