Childhood and Education
The eldest of six daughters, Chao was born in Taipei, Taiwan, to Ruth Mulan Chu Chao (趙朱木蘭 Zhào Zhū Mùlán), a historian, and Dr. James S.C. Chao (趙錫成博士 Zhào Xīchéng), who began his career as a merchant mariner and later, after getting established in New York, built a successful shipping company (Foremost Shipping Co.). Elaine Chao’s parents had fled to Taiwan from mainland China after the Chinese Communists took over after the Chinese Civil War in 1949. Chao attended Taipei’s Tsai Hsing Elementary School in kindergarten and first grade. Chao, her mother and two eldest sisters came to the U.S. aboard a freight ship in 1961, when she was eight years old. Her father had arrived in New York three years earlier after receiving a scholarship. It took three years for her father to save enough money to pay for his family’s passage from Taiwan and for visas to be obtained for them.
Elaine Chao received her B.A. in Economics from Mount Holyoke College in 1975 and her MBA from the Harvard Business School in 1979. Chao also studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dartmouth College, and Columbia University. In addition, Chao has received 34 honorary doctorate degrees from the following schools: Villanova University, St. John's University, Sacred Heart University, Drexel University, Niagara University, Thomas More College (Kentucky), Bellarmine University, University of Toledo, University of Louisville, Goucher College, Kentucky Wesleyan College, University of Notre Dame, Miami Dade College, University of South Carolina, Campbellsville University, Depauw University, St. Mary's College, Regent University, Northern Alabama University, Centre College, Fu Jen Catholic University, Wingate University, Northern Kentucky University, Catholic University of America, Elmira College, Agnes Scott College, Marquette University, Sweet Briar College, Murray State University, Nyack College, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, St. Catharine College, Western Kentucky University
Read more about this topic: Elaine Chao
Famous quotes containing the words childhood and, childhood and/or education:
“...I really hope no white person ever has cause to write about me
because they never understand Black love is Black wealth and they’ll
probably talk about my hard childhood and never understand that
all the while I was quite happy.”
—Nikki Giovanni (b. 1943)
“Adolescence is a border between childhood and adulthood. Like all borders, it’s teeming with energy and fraught with danger.”
—Mary Pipher (20th century)
“I think the most important education that we have is the education which now I am glad to say is being accepted as the proper one, and one which ought to be widely diffused, that industrial, vocational education which puts young men and women in a position from which they can by their own efforts work themselves to independence.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)