Caroline Kennedy, U.S. Ambassador to Australia

Caroline Kennedy is an American author, attorney, and diplomat serving as the United States ambassador to Australia since 2022. Kennedy previously served in the Obama administration as the United States ambassador to Japan from 2013 to 2017. She is a member of the Kennedy family and the only surviving child of U.S. president John F. Kennedy and first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

Less than a month before Caroline's third birthday, her father won the 1960 presidential election. She spent her early childhood years in the White House during his presidency, and was almost six when he was assassinated on November 22, 1963. The following year, she and her brother John F. Kennedy Jr. moved with their mother Jacqueline to the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where Caroline attended grade school.

Kennedy graduated from Harvard University and worked at Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she met her future husband, exhibit designer Edwin Schlossberg. She later earned a J.D. degree from Columbia Law School. Most of Kennedy's professional life has been in law, politics, education reform, and charitable work. She has also acted as a spokesperson for her family's legacy, especially that of her father, and co-authored two books with Ellen Alderman on civil liberties.

Early in the primary race for the 2008 presidential election, Kennedy and her uncle, Ted Kennedy, endorsed Democratic candidate Barack Obama. She later stumped for him in Florida, Indiana, and Ohio, served as co-chair of his Vice Presidential Search Committee, and addressed the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver.

After Obama selected United States senator Hillary Clinton to serve as secretary of state, Kennedy expressed interest in being appointed to Clinton's vacant Senate seat from New York, but later withdrew from consideration for personal reasons. In 2013, President Obama appointed Kennedy as the United States ambassador to Japan. Eight years later, Joe Biden appointed Kennedy as United States ambassador to Australia and she took office following her confirmation on June 10, 2022.

Family life

Kennedy was born on November 27, 1957, at New York Hospital to Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy and John F. Kennedy, then a U.S. senator from Massachusetts. She is named after her maternal aunt, Lee Radziwill, and maternal great-great-grandmother, Caroline Ewing Bouvier. A year before Caroline's birth, her parents had a stillborn daughter. She had a younger brother, John Jr., who was born just before her third birthday in 1960. Another brother, Patrick, died two days after his premature birth in 1963.

While working at the Met, Kennedy met her future husband, exhibit designer Edwin Schlossberg. They married in 1986 at Our Lady of Victory Church in Centerville, Massachusetts. Kennedy's first cousin Maria Shriver served as the matron of honor, and her uncle Ted Kennedy walked her down the aisle. Kennedy is sometimes incorrectly referred to as "Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg", but she did not change her name at the time she married.

Kennedy has three children: Rose Kennedy Schlossberg (born 1988), Tatiana Celia Kennedy Schlossberg (born 1990), and John Bouvier Kennedy Schlossberg, known as Jack (born 1993). (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Sources

• "Caroline Kennedy." Wikipedia, revision of 3 August 2024. < link > Accessed 5 August 2024.