Secretary of State

Institutional context

Clinton is the third woman to serve as US Secretary of State, after Albright (1997–2001) and Rice (2005–2009). Her appointment marks the third consecutive woman in the role within a 12-year span — the first time a US Cabinet department had registered three consecutive female holders.

Career path

Clinton earned a BA from Wellesley and a JD from Yale Law School. She practised law in Arkansas and served as First Lady of the United States from 1993 to 2001. She was elected to the United States Senate from New York in 2000 and re-elected in 2006, and contested the Democratic presidential primary against Barack Obama in 2008.

Appointment

Following her primary defeat, Obama nominated her as Secretary of State in November 2008. The Senate confirmed her on 21 January 2009 by 94–2. She served a single Obama term and departed on 1 February 2013, succeeded by John Kerry.

Tenure

Four years. Her tenure included the killing of Osama bin Laden, the 2011 NATO intervention in Libya, the Arab Spring including the Egyptian revolution, the September 2012 attack on the US compound in Benghazi, and the early phase of US sanctions on Russia following the Russo-Georgian War.

Cluster context

The State Department's three-consecutive-woman-Secretary line (1997–2001, 2005–2009, 2009–2013) is one of the most concentrated single-institution patterns in the dataset's pre-cluster era and is analytically distinct from the post-2018 cluster. Where the cluster distributes firsts across institutions in a compressed window, State's pattern is a single-institution succession over twelve years.

Sources

• US Department of State — Former Secretaries
• US Senate — Members register