VICKI KENNEDY

Victoria Reggie Kennedy was born in southwestern Louisiana in 1954. Her parents were active in the Democratic National Committee. She received her undergraduate and law degrees from Tulane University, where she was also a member of the Tulane Law Review. As an attorney, Kennedy specialized in banking and savings and loan law, ultimately making partner at a Washington, D.C. firm. The Kennedy and Reggie families had been friends for many years, though Ted and Vicki did not begin dating until 1991, and were married in 1992. She was a close and influential advisor to her husband’s senatorial re-election campaign in 1994. In 1999, Kennedy co-founded Common Sense about Kids and Guns, a gun safety advocacy group. As a board member of Catholic Democrats, she authored the preface for their 2009 book, The Catholic Case for Obama. She was named a trustee of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in the same year. Following Ted Kennedy’s diagnosis of brain cancer in 2008, she became her husband’s primary caregiver, until his death in 2009. More recently, Kennedy has served as senior counsel at the international law firm Greenberg, Traurig LLP. She is the President of the Board and co-founder of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate in Boston, a non-partisan organization created to educate the public about the unique role of the United States Senate in democracy. She is a Member of the Commission on Political Reform, a project of the Bi-Partisan Policy Center launched in March 2013 to investigate the causes and consequences of America’s partisan political divide and to advocate for specific reforms.