Gina Marie Raimondo, born on May 17, 1971, in Smithfield, Rhode Island, to Italian-American parents, is a former U.S. Secretary of Commerce (2021–2025). Her father, Mike Raimondo, a second-generation Italian-American, worked in the family scrapyard before owning Raimondo's Jewelry and Pawnbrokers. Raised in a middle-class family in a blue-collar community, she attended the all-girls Catholic La Salle Academy in Providence, Rhode Island, where she excelled academically and athletically, captaining the field hockey team. Raimondo pursued higher education at Brown University, earning an A.B. in economics in 1993. As a Rhodes Scholar, she attended New College at the University of Oxford, completing a D.Phil. in sociology in 2002. She also obtained a Master of Public Policy (MPP) from Harvard Kennedy School in 2000. After graduation, she worked in finance and venture capital, interning at Goldman Sachs and McKinsey & Company, before co-founding the venture capital firm Point Judith Capital in 2006, which invested in clean energy and life sciences startups. Entering politics as a Democrat, Raimondo served as Rhode Island General Treasurer from 2011 to 2015, where she overhauled the state's underfunded pension system through Rhode Island Retirement Security (RIRS), drawing criticism from public unions for cutting benefits and criticized for ties to private equity firms managing pension assets. Elected the state's first female governor in 2014, she served from 2015 to 2021, prioritizing economic growth, education reform via 'Mayor's Compact,' infrastructure via RhodeWorks, and positioning Rhode Island as a tech hub, though facing controversies over state contracts and real estate deals involving her firm. She is married to Andrew Moffit, a former Brown University basketball player, with whom she has two sons.