Victoria Reggie Kennedy.Photo: Nancy Lane/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald via Getty
Victoria Reggie Kennedy — the widow of lateSen. Ted Kennedy— has been nominated to serve as the U.S. ambassador to Austria, the White House announced on Wednesday.
Kennedy, 67, is co-founder and president of the board of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate — a non-partisan non-profit that educates the public about the U.S. Senate — and is senior counsel at the international law firm Greenberg Traurig.
She is also a gun violence prevention advocate, having founded the group Common Sense about Kids and Guns and previously serving on the board of trustees of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
Kennedy has known thePresident Joe Bidenfor years. Her late husband Ted served in the Senate from 1962 until his death in 2009, working alongside Biden in the chamber. Ted was the younger brother of former PresidentJohn F. Kennedyand U.S. Attorney General and Sen.Robert F. Kennedy.
According to a2009 ABC News profile, Kennedy first met Ted when she worked as a summer intern in his Senate office. Years later, they caught up at her parents' 1991 anniversary party (at the time, she was a divorced mother of two with a career as an attorney).
Ted Kennedy died on August 25, 2009, of a malignant brain tumor at his home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.
In addition to announcing his nomination of Kennedy, the White House also announced that it would nominate Comcast executive David Cohen to serve as his ambassador to Canada and South Carolina attorneyJamie Harpootlia(the wife of Democratic state Sen. Dick Harpootlia) as ambassador to Slovenia.
The Tuesday announcement comes on the heels of a June statement in which Biden said he would be nominatingCindy McCain, a key Republican ally and the widow of his late friend Sen.John McCain, to be the U.S. representative to the United Nations' agencies for food and agriculture.
source: people.com
