Elizabeth Edwards

Senior Fellow

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Elizabeth Edwards is a Senior Fellow at American Progress where she works on health care issues and writes occasionally for the Wonk Room, the Center for American Progress Action Fund's newly launched, first-of-its-kind,  rapid-response policy blog. She shares her husband Senator John Edwards' deep commitment to improving America's future. A passionate advocate for children and an accomplished attorney, she has been a tireless worker on behalf of important social causes.

Elizabeth Edwards charmed America with her down-to-earth personality as she campaigned in 2004 for her husband, then-vice presidential nominee John Edwards. She is the author of The New York Times bestseller, Saving Graces: Finding Solace and Strength from Friends and Strangers, a memoir of her trials, tragedies, and triumphs, and of how various communities celebrated her joys and lent her steady strength and quiet hope in darker times.

The daughter of a decorated Navy pilot, Edwards graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with a degree in English. She went on to study American literature before switching to law. She graduated from UNC Law School in May 1977 and married John Edwards on July 30 of that year, the Saturday after she took the bar exam.

Like her husband, Edwards possesses an accomplished legal background. Following law school, she clerked with U.S. District Court Judge Calvitt Clarke, Jr. in Norfolk, Virginia. She worked for the North Carolina Attorney General's office in the early 1980s, where she did work for the Department of Natural Resources and Community Development and the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act.

From 1984 to 1996, Edwards worked at the Raleigh law firm Merriman, Nicholls, and Crampton. In the early 1990s, she taught legal writing as an adjunct instructor at UNC Law School for two years, and in 1996 to 1997, she was a member of the first group of public fellows at the College of Arts and Sciences at UNC.

Edwards is the proud mother of four children: Catharine, Emma Claire, and Jack. Her first child, Wade, died in 1996. Despite the demands of raising two young children, Edwards still finds time to participate in community service. She remains active in the Wade Edwards Foundation, and is involved in a variety of charitable efforts. She has also served on several boards, including the UNC Board of Visitors and Books for Kids.

Email: eedwards /@\ americanprogress.org