O'Leary, Hazel Rollins, 1937- - Social Networks and Archival Context (original) (raw)

Hazel Reid O'Leary (born May 17, 1937) is an American lawyer, businesswoman, and cabinet official. She served as the seventh United States Secretary of Energy from 1993 to 1997, the first woman and first African American to hold the position.

Born in Newport News, Virginia, she attended school in a segregated school system there for eight years. Thereafter, she and her sister were then sent to live with an aunt in Essex County, New Jersey, and attend Arts High School, an integrated school. She went on to earn a bachelor's degree at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee and a Bachelor of Laws degree from Rutgers Law School in Newark, New Jersey. O'Leary worked as a prosecutor in New Jersey on organized crime cases after graduation, later becoming an assistant attorney general for the state. Later, she moved to Washington, D.C., where she joined the consulting/accounting firm Coopers & Lybrand. During the Carter administration, O'Leary was appointed assistant administrator of the Federal Energy Administration, general counsel of the Community Services Administration, and administrator of the Economic Regulatory Administration at the newly created Department of Energy. In 1981 O'Leary and her husband established the consulting firm O'Leary & Associates in Morristown, New Jersey, where she served as vice president and general counsel. From 1989 to 1993 she worked as an executive vice president of the Northern States Power Company, a Minnesota-based public utilities.

In a press conference on December 21, 1992, held in Little Rock, Arkansas, then President-elect Bill Clinton announced his intention to nominate O'Leary as Secretary of Energy. Clinton officially made the nomination on January 20, 1993, and the Senate confirmed O'Leary by unanimous consent the next day. O'Leary became the first woman and first African American to serve as Secretary of Energy. She was also the first Secretary of Energy to have worked for an energy company. O'Leary challenged the way the department had traditionally been run, particularly its focus on developing and testing nuclear weapons. During her tenure, the size of the Department of Energy was reduced by a third. It was also a target for Republicans who wanted it eliminated entirely. While reducing the size of the department overall, O'Leary shifted resources toward efficient and renewable energy sources, a priority of the Clinton administration. O'Leary resigned from her position effective January 20, 1997, explaining she did not wish to stay in the job more than four years.

After leaving the Department of Energy, O'Leary once again served as president of O'Leary & Associates, her consulting firm. She also sat on the board of the environmental engineering firm ICF Kaiser International. In 2000, she became president and chief operating officer of an investment banking firm, Blaylock & Partners. She left that firm in 2002. On July 13, 2004, O'Leary was selected and began work as president of her undergraduate alma mater, Fisk University, a historically black college in Nashville, Tennessee. She was officially installed as the university's 14th president on October 6, 2005. In 2012 O'Leary announced that she would retire as president at the end of the calendar year. Her retirement was effective January 31, 2013.

O'Leary currently serves on the boards of directors of the Nashville Alliance for Public Education, Nashville Business Community for the Arts, World Wildlife Fund, Arms Control Association and CAMAC Energy Inc.