1. Elaine Lan Chao was born on March 26,1953 and is an American businesswoman and former government official who served as United States secretary of labor in the administration of George W Bush from 2001 to 2009 and as United States secretary of transportation in the administration of Donald Trump from 2017 to 2021.
Elaine Chao was born in Taipei, Taiwan, to waishengren parents who fled China as a result of the Chinese Civil War.
Elaine Chao immigrated to the United States when she was eight years old.
Elaine Chao's father founded the Foremost Group, an American shipping company based in New York.
Elaine Chao was raised in Queens, New York, and on Long Island, 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 has served on several Fortune 500 and nonprofit boards of directors, including the electric charger network provider ChargePoint since 2021.
Elaine Chao was born in Taipei, Taiwan, on March 26,1953, and immigrated to the United States when she was eight years old.
Elaine Chao is the eldest of six daughters of Ruth Mulan Chu Chao, a historian from Anhui, and James S C Chao, a Shanghainese businessman 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 and sent money home until the rest of the family could join him in the United States.
Elaine Chao's father "worked three jobs" to support the family and the then-five family members lived in a one-bedroom apartment.
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.
Elaine Chao received an MBA degree from Harvard Business School.
Elaine Chao was granted a White House Fellowship during the Reagan Administration.
In 1986, Elaine Chao became Deputy Administrator of the Maritime Administration in the US Department of Transportation.
Bush nominated Elaine Chao to be Deputy Secretary of Transportation; she served from 1989 to 1991.
Elaine Chao was the first Asian American to serve in any of these positions.
Elaine Chao expanded the Peace Corps' 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 from 1992 to 1996 as president and CEO of United Way of America.
Elaine Chao was the first Asian 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 was unanimously confirmed by the Senate for her appointment as Secretary of Labor.
Elaine Chao set up an emergency response hotline dedicated to the Gulf Coast region for people seeking benefits and worker protection information.
Immediately following the Sago mine disaster, Secretary Elaine Chao vowed to "take the necessary steps to ensure that this never happens again".
In 2009, Elaine Chao resumed her previous role at a think tank, and she contributed to Fox News and other media outlets.
In February 2017, the Associated Press reported that Elaine Chao was paid by a speaker's bureau to give a speech regarding women's empowerment to an organization later found to be linked to the People's Mujahedin of Iran, a group exiled from Iran after actions in the 1970s against the Shah of Iran and the Ayatollah Khomeini.
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.
The DOT under Elaine Chao issued updated guidelines on automated or "self-driving" cars and trucks.
Elaine Chao helped with FAA's successful efforts to reform its regulations and restore the US lead in enabling the largest number of private commercial space launches.
Under Elaine Chao, Rosen served as Chair of DOT's Regulatory Reform Task Force.
In May 2020, following the start of the COVID-19 outbreak and related changes to travel, Elaine Chao sternly warned airlines to follow their published ticket refund procedures, as well as DOT regulations, in light of high demand for travel changes.
Elaine Chao demanded airlines provide cash refunds when required by law, and urged them to provide cash refunds as broadly as possible.
Elaine Chao later announced the disbursement of $1.2 billion in grants to airports to maintain readiness for when passenger travel returned.
Elaine Chao worked to permit truckers to deliver essential goods to New York City, which had been attempting to impose a 14-day quarantine on out-of-state truckers bringing goods into the city.
Elaine Chao's department worked with state governments to maintain access to highway rest areas, including permitting food trucks to provide hot food to truckers and travelers.
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.
In October 2019, Elaine Chao launched the Rural Opportunities to Use Transportation for Economic Success initiative, intended to improve rural transportation infrastructure.
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.
In 2021 Elaine Chao spoke publicly against incidents of anti-Asian harassment.
The Transportation Department's inspector general cited numerous instances where Elaine Chao's office helped promote her family's shipping business.
Elaine Chao pledged in 2017 to divest into cash the "deferred stock units" she had earned while she was on the board of directors of Vulcan Materials by April 2018.
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, which former Department of Transportation officials described as unusual.
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.
In 2021, Chao joined the Board of Trustees of the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Elaine Chao holds 38 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.
From July 2022 onward, Trump had criticized McConnell's leadership on social media and directed attacks at Elaine Chao, including calling her "Coco Chow," seen by some as overtly racist.
Elaine Chao doesn't seem to understand that, which says a whole lot more about him than it will ever say about Asian Americans.
Elaine Chao's father has donated "millions of dollars" to the Elaine Chao-McConnell family.
Elaine Chao's extended family has given more than a million dollars to McConnell's campaigns.
Elaine Chao has five younger sisters, including Angela, former CEO of the Foremost Group.
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.