Caroline Kennedy - Public Career

Public Career

Kennedy is an attorney, writer, and editor and serves on the boards of numerous non-profit organizations. From 2002 through 2004, she worked as director of the Office of Strategic Partnerships for the New York City Department of Education. The three-day-a-week job paid her a salary of $1 and had the goal of raising private money for the New York City public schools. In that capacity, she helped raise more than $65 million for the city’s public schools. She currently serves as one of two vice chairs of the board of directors of The Fund for Public Schools, a public-private partnership founded in 2002 to attract private funding for public schools in New York City. She has also served on the board of trustees of Concord Academy, which she attended as a child.

Kennedy and other members of her family created the Profile in Courage Award in 1989. The award is given to a public official or officials whose actions demonstrate politically courageous leadership in the spirit of John F. Kennedy's book, Profiles in Courage. She is also president of the Kennedy Library Foundation and an adviser to the Harvard Institute of Politics, a living memorial to her father. Kennedy is a member of the New York and Washington, D.C., bar associations. She is also a member of the boards of directors of the Commission on Presidential Debates and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and is an honorary chair of the American Ballet Theatre. Kennedy has represented her family at the funeral services of former presidents Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford and former First Lady Lady Bird Johnson. She also represented her family at the dedication of the Bill Clinton Presidential Center and Park in Little Rock, Arkansas in November 2004.