Donna Edna Shalala ( shə-LAY-lə; born February 14, 1941) is an American retired politician and academic. She served in the Carter and Clinton administrations. From 2019 to 2021, she served in the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Florida's 27th congressional district for a single term before losing re-election. She is a member of the Democratic Party.
Shalala received a bachelor's degree in 1962 and served in the Peace Corps before earning a PhD from Syracuse University in 1970. She subsequently held faculty positions at Baruch College and Columbia University, and was appointed Assistant Secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development under President Jimmy Carter. She served as president of Hunter College from 1980 to 1988, then as chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. From 1993 to 2001, she served as U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Bill Clinton — the longest tenure in that role — and was the first Lebanese-American to hold a Cabinet position. She subsequently served as president of the University of Miami (2001–2015) and the Clinton Foundation (2015–2017). In 2008, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Shalala was first elected to Congress in 2018. She served one term before losing re-election in 2020 to María Elvira Salazar in an upset. Shalala was interim president of The New School in New York City from 2023 to 2024.
Shalala was born in Cleveland, Ohio, of Maronite Catholic Lebanese descent. Her father sold real estate; and her mother, one of the first Lebanese-Americans to graduate from Ohio State University, was a teacher who worked two jobs and attended law school at night. She has a twin sister, Diane Fritel.
Shalala attended West Technical High School where she was the editor of the school newspaper. She received a bachelor's degree in 1962 from Western College for Women. From 1962 to 1964, she was among the first volunteers to serve in the Peace Corps. Her placement took her to a rural farming village in southern Iran where she worked with other volunteers to construct an agricultural college. In 1970, she earned a Ph.D. from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York.
Teaching and Carter administration (1970–1988)
Shalala began her teaching career as a political science professor at Baruch College, part of the City University of New York, where she also was a member of the American Federation of Teachers union.
In 1972, Shalala became a professor of politics and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, a post she held until 1979. Shalala became the only woman on the Municipal Assistance Corporation, a group tasked with saving the city during the 1975 New York City fiscal crisis. Concurrently, from 1977 to 1980, she served as the assistant secretary for policy development and research at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development during the Carter administration.
Shalala's first experience with academic administration came on October 8, 1980, when she became the tenth president of Hunter College, serving in this capacity until 1988.
University of Wisconsin–Madison chancellorship (1988–1993)
Shalala served as chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Madison from 1988 to 1993. At the time of her chancellorship, the university included 42,000 students, employed 16,500 people, and had an annual budget of $1 billion. She was the first woman to lead a Big Ten Conference school and only the second woman in the country to head a major research university.
Under Shalala's chancellorship and with her support, the university adopted a broad speech code subjecting students to disciplinary action for communications that were perceived as hate speech. That speech code was later found unconstitutional by a federal judge. Also while chancellor, Shalala supported passage of a revised faculty speech code broadly restricting "harmful" speech in both "noninstructional" and "instructional" settings. The faculty speech code was abolished ten years later, after a number of professors were investigated for alleged or suspected violations.
U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (1993–2001)
Following a year serving as chair of the Children's Defense Fund (1992–1993), Shalala was nominated in 1992 by then President-elect Bill Clinton for the position of United States Secretary of Health and Human Services. The Washington Post labeled her "one of the most controversial Clinton Cabinet nominees". Her nomination went before the Senate Finance Committee in January 1993, and the Senate voted to confirm her on January 22, 1993. At the start of Shalala's tenure, the Department of Health and Human Services employed 125,000 people and had a budget of $539 billion.
Shalala served as HHS secretary for eight years during the Clinton administration, becoming the nation's longest-serving HHS secretary. In 1996, Shalala was the designated survivor during Clinton's State of the Union address. She is the first Lebanese-American to serve in a cabinet position.
In 2001, Shalala joined the boards of UnitedHealth and Lennar, where over the following decade she earned millions of dollars. Shalala was paid almost a half-million dollars in 2010 to serve on the boards of three companies, two of which were run by University of Miami trustees.
When she left Lennar in 2012, the company reported it was to avoid a "conflict of interest". Lennar's CEO, Stuart Miller, had joined the University of Miami Board of Trustees in 2002. Shalala rejoined Lennar in 2017 after she was no longer President of the University. She has also been member of the advisory board of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.
University of Miami presidency (2001–2015)