Elizabeth Edwards shares her husband’s deep commitment to improving the daily lives of all Americans and making sure that everyone in this country has the opportunity to succeed. A passionate advocate for children and families, as well as an accomplished attorney, she has been a tireless advocate for many important causes.

Elizabeth is the daughter of a decorated Navy pilot. In her early years, she attended school in Japan, where her father was stationed with a reconnaissance squadron, flying missions over China and North Korea. As an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Elizabeth majored in English. She went on to study American literature but then switched to law, graduating from UNC Law School in May 1977. She met John in law school, and they got married the Saturday after they took the bar exam.

Like her husband, Elizabeth has an impressive legal background. Following law school, she clerked with U.S. District Court Judge Calvitt Clarke, Jr. in Norfolk, Virginia. Later, she worked for the North Carolina Attorney General’s office and then was a bankruptcy lawyer in Raleigh, North Carolina. Elizabeth also taught legal writing as an adjunct instructor at UNC Law School for two years, and in 1997-98, she was a member of the first group of Public Fellows at the College of Arts and Sciences at UNC.

Both Elizabeth and her husband are strongly committed to strengthening communities and expanding educational opportunities for all children. She volunteered with the Parent Teacher Associations at her children’s schools, and has been active in their youth soccer leagues in several roles.

In 1996, John and Elizabeth helped establish the Wade Edwards Foundation, and helped build a free computer lab – the Wade Edwards Learning Lab – for high school students in Raleigh. Recently, the foundation opened a similar computer lab in Goldsboro. Elizabeth volunteered at the lab in Raleigh nearly every day, until the family came to Washington following her husband’s 1998 election to the U.S. Senate. The Wade Edwards Foundation also runs a statewide short fiction contest for North Carolina’s high school juniors, awarding scholarships and grants to high school English students.

The country got to know Elizabeth when she campaigned extensively across the country during her husband’s presidential and vice-presidential campaigns. The day after the general election in 2004, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her doctors believe her treatment went extremely well and the prognosis continues to be very positive. At every step, she has proved that she is a fighter and that she will beat breast cancer. John and Elizabeth have had four children, including their eldest daughter, Catharine, who lives in New York; seven-year-old Emma Claire, and a five-year-old son, Jack. Their first child, Wade, died in 1996.