18 Facts About Kristin Cooper

Kristin Bernhardt Cooper was born on July 19,1956 and is an American lawyer who served as First Lady of North Carolina from 2017 to 2025.

Roy Kristin Cooper was elected governor of North Carolina in 2016.

Kristin Cooper grew up with three younger sisters in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and attended public schools.

Kristin Cooper received her undergraduate degree from the University of Oklahoma.

Kristin Cooper later said that law school represented the only possible educational path, besides becoming a professor, that combined her multipotential interests in reading, writing, and history.

Kristin Cooper worked as a staff attorney with the Oklahoma Legislature and the North Carolina General Assembly.

Kristin Cooper was a member of North Carolina's committee on inaugural ceremonies and, in 1997, attended the swearing-in as North Carolina Secretary of State of Campbell Law School classmate Elaine Marshall, who had become the first woman in North Carolina elected to statewide office.

Kristin Cooper has said that neglect is the reason that children enter the foster system; furthermore, she said, neglect is often due to poverty, and poverty from illiteracy.

Kristin Cooper said that children should be well-nourished when they go to school.

Roy Kristin Cooper was first elected as a state representative and then was appointed to the state senate, where he eventually became the Democratic majority leader.

Kristin Cooper served two years on the board of the North Carolina Arts Council, which provides grants across the state.

Kristin Cooper has described herself as an amateur gardener and birdwatcher; she said she cultivated an interest in birding during the 1996 extreme weather event that snowed her in with three children, "a big window and a pair of binoculars and a field guide".

Kristin Cooper has led a knitting circle, a hobby she said her great-grandmother enjoyed.

In 2016, Roy Kristin Cooper ran for Governor of North Carolina and was elected over Republican incumbent Pat McCrory.

Kristin Cooper set a goal to make meaningful visits to all 100 counties of North Carolina by 2020 and, as she has said, to bring advice from those visits back to her husband.

Kristin Cooper has said that children's literacy can begin to be developed easily when their parents read to them, such as through the program Reach Out and Read.

Kristin Cooper has praised Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, which sends a new book every month to children under five, and for which the General Assembly allocated $3.5 million in 2017.

Kristin Cooper has visited several food service sites in Advance and the Triangle, and has seen several North Carolina public schools that provide breakfast to students.