Updated: August 12, 2010

Hillary Clinton is the Secretary of State of the United States.

A former presidential candidate, New York State Senator and first lady, Clinton joined the Obama administration after the 2008 election.

Born outside of Chicago, Hillary Rodham was raised in a conservative household and maintained traditional conservative political positions until college, when she found herself sympathetic with anti-war sentiments and the Civil Rights movement. She left the Republican party after attending the 1968 Republican Convention where Richard Nixon became the party's candidate.

After she graduated from Yale in 1973, Bill Clinton proposed to but she turned him down. She did, however, stay on in New Haven until he graduated the following year. She spent the time doing post-graduate work at the Yale Child Study Center where she published a much cited article in the Harvard Educational Review about children and their legal rights.

Clinton chose to move to Arkansas in 1975 where she and Bill Clinton married, and where Bill had already entered politics. She held various law firm positions while continuing her work for child advocacy and her daughter, Chelsea, was born in 1980, two years after Bill Clinton was first elected to governor. In 1992, Bill Clinton was elected President and the family moved to Washington.

After eight years of Bill Clinton's tumultuous, albeit considered relatively successful presidency, Clinton ran and won a seat in the United States Senate from New York. She has been praised for her achievements in this role, while also enduring criticism for neglecting her duties in the Senate to run for president in the long campaign leading up to the 2008 elections.

After losing the Democratic Presidential Nomination, Clinton put her full support behind Barack Obama's successful election to the presidency. In December of 2008, Obama nominated her for the secretary of state position in his cabinet, and she was confirmed by a Senate vote of 94-2.

As secretary, she has made important trips to China and Russia and has continued to promote the Obama Administrations policy throughout the world.