1. Janet Ann Napolitano is an American politician, lawyer, and academic administrator.
67 Facts About Janet Napolitano
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Janet Napolitano served as president of the University of California from 2013 to 2020, on the faculty at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley since 2015, the United States secretary of homeland security from 2009 to 2013, and the 21st governor of Arizona from 2003 to 2009.
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Janet Napolitano was the first woman and the 23rd person to serve in that office.
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Janet Napolitano had earlier served as the United States attorney for the District of Arizona.
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Janet Napolitano has been the first woman to serve in several offices, including attorney general of Arizona, secretary of homeland security, and president of the University of California.
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Janet Napolitano sits on the bipartisan advisory board of States United Democracy Center.
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Janet Napolitano was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2018.
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Janet Napolitano was born on November 29,1957, in New York City, the daughter of Jane Marie and Leonard Michael Napolitano, who was the dean of the University of New Mexico School of Medicine.
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Janet Napolitano's father was of Italian descent and her mother had German and Austrian ancestry.
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Janet Napolitano is the oldest of three children, with a younger brother and sister.
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Janet Napolitano was raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she graduated from Sandia High School in 1975.
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Janet Napolitano was Santa Clara's first female valedictorian, a Truman Scholar, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
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Janet Napolitano then went to the University of Virginia School of Law after which she served as a law clerk for Judge Mary M Schroeder of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, then joined Schroeder's former firm, Lewis and Roca, in Phoenix.
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Janet Napolitano was named a partner of the firm in 1989.
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In 1991, while a partner at Lewis and Roca LLP, Janet Napolitano served as an attorney for Anita Hill.
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In 1993, Janet Napolitano was appointed by President Bill Clinton as United States attorney for the District of Arizona.
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Janet Napolitano ran for and won the position of Arizona attorney general in 1998.
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Janet Napolitano recalled that the pain was so unbearable that she could not stand up.
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In 2002, Janet Napolitano narrowly won the gubernatorial election with 46 percent of the vote, succeeding Republican Jane Dee Hull and defeating her Republican opponent, former congressman Matt Salmon, who received 45 percent of the vote.
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Janet Napolitano was Arizona's third female governor and the first female elected governor in the United States to succeed another elected female governor.
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Janet Napolitano was the first Democrat popularly elected to the governorship since Bruce Babbitt left office in 1987, and the first female governor of Arizona to be elected outright.
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Janet Napolitano spoke at the 2004 Democratic Convention, where some initially considered her to be a possible running mate for presidential candidate Sen.
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Janet Napolitano successfully negotiated the creation of voluntary full-day kindergarten in Arizona.
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Janet Napolitano created a literacy program, and acquired funding for an increase in teacher salaries.
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Janet Napolitano spearheaded significant investments in higher education, including funding a Phoenix campus for the University of Arizona College of Medicine.
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Janet Napolitano built the state's rainy day fund to more than $650 million, at the time the highest ever.
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Janet Napolitano played a leading role in the successful bid to host Super Bowl XLII in Glendale, Arizona, expanded the number of teams in the Cactus league and invested heavily in tourism and economic development initiatives.
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Janet Napolitano was one of the first governors to call for the National Guard at the border after declaring a state emergency related to border security.
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In November 2006, Janet Napolitano was re-elected as governor, defeating the Republican challenger, Len Munsil, by a nearly 2:1 ratio.
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Janet Napolitano was the first woman to be re-elected to that office and the first gubernatorial candidate in state history to win every county and every legislative district in Arizona.
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In January 2006, Janet Napolitano won the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service.
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Janet Napolitano served as a member of the Democratic Governors Association Executive Committee.
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Janet Napolitano has served previously as chair of the Western Governors Association, and the National Governors Association.
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Janet Napolitano served as NGA chair from 2006 to 2007, and was the first female governor and first governor of Arizona to serve in that position.
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In February 2006, Janet Napolitano was named by The White House Project as one of "8 in '08", a group of eight female politicians who were suggested as possible candidates for president in 2008.
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On January 20,2009, Janet Napolitano was confirmed, becoming the first woman appointed as Secretary in the relatively new department, and the fourth person to hold the position overall.
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Janet Napolitano explained that she misunderstood the question and was referring to other individuals who had planned attacks and entered through Canada, but Canadian diplomats rebuked her for helping perpetuate a myth.
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Nevertheless, Janet Napolitano later claimed that "Canada allows people into its country that we do not allow into ours" as a justification for treating the Mexican and Canadian borders equally.
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Janet Napolitano was the subject of controversy after the release of a Department of Homeland Security threat assessment report that was seen as derogatory towards armed forces veterans.
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Janet Napolitano made multiple apologies for offending veterans groups by the reference to veterans in the assessment, and promised to meet with those groups to discuss the issue.
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Janet Napolitano was criticized for stating in an interview with CNN's Candy Crowley that "the system worked" with regard to an attempted terrorist attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 approaching Detroit on Christmas Day 2009.
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Janet Napolitano later went on NBC's Today Show with host Matt Lauer and admitted that the security system had indeed failed.
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Janet Napolitano expanded the US Customs and Border Protection trusted traveler program, Global Entry, to include more American travelers and some from verified partners abroad.
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Janet Napolitano came under scrutiny for contradicting herself about whether the program is voluntary or mandatory for local jurisdictions.
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On September 7,2010, Janet Napolitano said in a letter to Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren that jurisdictions that wished to withdraw from the program could do so.
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On January 12,2011, together with President Barack Obama, Janet Napolitano was one of the speakers selected to express sympathy to the community of Tucson, the State of Arizona, and the rest of the nation in a televised memorial for the 2011 Tucson shooting.
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In July 2012, Janet Napolitano was accused of allowing discrimination against male staffers within the Department of Homeland Security.
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The suit claimed that when the abuse was reported to the Equal Employment Opportunity office Janet Napolitano launched a series of misconduct investigations against the reporting party, Hayes.
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Janet Napolitano was sued by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who claims he was pulled from his post at JFK Airport after making a series of employment-discrimination complaints.
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Janet Napolitano was a long-term advocate for comprehensive immigration reform, starting with her terms as governor of Arizona.
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In 2012, in an effort to provide relief for the so-called DREAM Act population, or DREAMers, Janet Napolitano used prosecutorial discretion to create the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
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In July 2013, Janet Napolitano announced she would leave her post as Secretary of Homeland Security to become president of the University of California.
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Janet Napolitano was appointed the 20th president by the University of California Board of Regents on July 18,2013, the first woman to lead the University of California, and began her tenure as president on September 30,2013.
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Janet Napolitano initiated an ambitious ongoing plan for the ten-campus system to achieve carbon neutrality by 2025, saying that it was a 'moral imperative' for UC to find solutions to global climate change.
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In seeking to reduce UC's carbon footprint to zero, Janet Napolitano authorized the university to register as an Electric Service Provider, allowing it to supply energy directly to some of its campuses and medical centers from an 80-MW solar farm in Fresno.
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In 2017, Janet Napolitano was awarded the Pat Brown Award from the California Council for Environmental and Economic Balance for her environmental leadership.
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Janet Napolitano has used her tenure as president to encourage more students to pursue public interest careers.
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Janet Napolitano created a system-wide Title IX office and appointed the first system-wide Title IX coordinator in January 2017.
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In 2020, Janet Napolitano fired 82 University of California, Santa Cruz graduate students for withholding grades in a wildcat strike for a Cost of Living Adjustment to address living conditions.
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Janet Napolitano was repeatedly discussed as a contender for appointment to the US Supreme Court.
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In September 2014, when Attorney General Eric Holder announced his intention to step down, there was speculation that Janet Napolitano might be a candidate for the next United States attorney general.
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Janet Napolitano serves as an advisor on the COVID-19 Technology Task Force, a technology industry coalition founded in March 2020 collaborating on solutions to respond to and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
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In May 2022, Janet Napolitano was appointed to serve as a member of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board.
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Janet Napolitano is an avid basketball fan and regularly plays tennis and softball.
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Janet Napolitano has hiked in Arizona's Superstition Mountains, New Mexico's Sandia Mountains, and the Himalayas, and has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.
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Janet Napolitano responded by saying that she is "just a straight, single workaholic".
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On January 17,2017, Janet Napolitano was hospitalized in Oakland due to complications from the cancer treatment.