47 Facts About Elaine Chao

Elaine Lan Chao was born on March 26,1953 and is an American businesswoman and former government official.

Elaine Chao's father founded the Foremost Group, an American shipping company based in New York.

Elaine Chao was raised on Long Island, New York, and received degrees from Mount Holyoke College and Harvard Business School.

Elaine Chao served as Director of the Peace Corps from 1991 to 1992 and as president of the United Way of America from 1993 to 1996.

Elaine Chao was born in Taipei, Taiwan, on March 26,1953, the eldest of six daughters of Ruth Mulan Chu Chao, a historian, and James S C Chao, who began his career as a merchant mariner and in 1964 founded the shipping company Foremost Maritime Corporation in New York City which developed into the Foremost Group.

In 1961, at the age of 8, Elaine Chao came to the United States on a 37-day freight ship journey along with her mother and two younger sisters.

Elaine Chao's father had arrived in New York three years earlier after receiving a scholarship.

Elaine Chao attended Tsai Hsing Elementary School in Taiwan for kindergarten and first grade.

Elaine Chao attended Syosset High School in Syosset, New York, in Nassau County on Long Island and was naturalized as a US citizen at the age of 19.

Elaine Chao received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, in 1975.

Elaine Chao received an MBA degree from Harvard Business School in 1979.

Elaine Chao was granted a White House Fellowship during the Reagan Administration and was then vice president, syndications at Bank of America.

In 1986, Elaine Chao became Deputy Administrator of the Maritime Administration in the US Department of Transportation.

Elaine Chao was the first Asian Pacific American to serve in any of these positions.

Elaine Chao expanded the Peace Corps's presence in Eastern Europe and Central Asia by establishing the first Peace Corps programs in Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union, including the first Peace Corps programs in Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia and Russia.

Bush's administration, Elaine Chao worked for three years from 1993 to 1996 as president and CEO of United Way of America.

Elaine Chao was the first Asian Pacific American to hold that role.

Elaine Chao is credited with returning credibility and public trust to the organization after a financial mismanagement scandal involving former president William Aramony.

From 1996 until her appointment as Secretary of Labor, Elaine Chao worked at a conservative think tank in Washington, DC She was a board member of the Independent Women's Forum.

Elaine Chao later returned to think tanks after leaving the government in January 2009.

Elaine Chao delivered a speech at the 2000 Republican National Convention.

Elaine Chao was the longest-serving Secretary of Labor since Frances Perkins, who served from 1933 to 1945 under President Franklin D Roosevelt.

Elaine Chao set up an emergency response hotline dedicated to the Gulf Coast region for people seeking benefits and worker protection information.

In 2009, Elaine Chao resumed her previous role at a think tank, and she contributed to Fox News and other media outlets.

Elaine Chao was paid a total of $67,000 for the two speeches, which took place in 2015 and 2016.

US President-elect Donald Trump announced on November 29,2016, that he would nominate Elaine Chao to be Secretary of Transportation.

Elaine Chao led the US delegation to the inauguration of Indonesia's President Joko Widodo.

On January 7,2021, the day after the January 6 United States Capitol attack, Elaine Chao submitted her resignation effective January 11,2021.

Elaine Chao was then the highest ranking member of the administration to resign due to the riots and the first cabinet officer to do so; her resignation cited the "traumatic and entirely avoidable" violence and stated that it "deeply troubled" her.

In 2017, Elaine Chao announced the establishment of a pilot program to test and evaluate the integration of civil and public drone operations into the airspace system.

In March 2019, Elaine Chao announced the formation of the Non-Traditional and Emerging Transportation Technology Council, an internal Department of Transportation group for identifying "jurisdictional and regulatory gaps" when considering new transportation technologies.

An October 2018 Politico analysis found that Elaine Chao had more than 290 hours of appointments which were labelled as "private" during working hours on working days in the first 14 months of her tenure as Secretary of Transportation.

The Transportation Department's inspector general cited numerous instances where Elaine Chao's office helped promote her family's shipping business.

In what The Times described as "a rarity for foreigners", Angela and James Elaine Chao have served on the boards of a Chinese state-owned shipbuilder, and Angela has been on the board of the Bank of China, as well as the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade.

Elaine Chao's Department sought for three years to prevent funding for a program that supports the viability of small domestic US shipyards, and a separate program that issues loan guarantees for the construction or reconstruction of ships with American registration.

Elaine Chao pledged in 2017 to sell the stock she had earned while she was on the board of directors of Vulcan Materials, one of the largest suppliers of road-paving materials in the United States, by April 2018.

In June 2019, Politico reported that in 2017 Elaine Chao had designated her aide Todd Inman as a special liaison "to help with grant applications and other priorities" for Transportation Department projects in the state of Kentucky, the only state to have such a liaison.

Behm, who was not a political appointee, was conducting an investigation into whether Secretary Elaine Chao was giving preferential treatment to projects in Kentucky.

However, at the same time, Elliott served in a dual role where Elaine Chao was his boss.

Elaine Chao holds thirty-six honorary doctorates, including an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Georgetown McDonough School of Business in 2015.

Elaine Chao was initiated into Omicron Delta Kappa at SUNY Plattsburgh as an honoris causa initiate in 1996.

In 1993, Elaine Chao married Mitch McConnell, US Senator from Kentucky.

Elaine Chao has been described as "the campaign hugger" and is known for bipartisan socializing.

Elaine Chao's father has donated millions of dollars to Mitch McConnell's re-election campaigns.

Elaine Chao's extended family has given more than a million dollars to McConnell's campaigns.

Elaine Chao founded and led application software company Auric Technology LLC until it was sold to a company based in Mexico in 2011 and then helped govern the Hartogensis Family Trust.

Ruth Mulan Chu Elaine Chao returned to school at age 51 to earn a master's degree in Asian literature and history from St John's University in the Queens borough of New York City.