Elizabeth Warren - Early Life, Education, Marriage and Family

Early Life, Education, Marriage and Family

Warren was born Elizabeth Herring on June 22, 1949, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to working class parents Pauline (née Reed) and Donald Jones Herring. She was the Herrings' fourth child, and had three older brothers. When she was twelve, her father, a janitor, had a heart attack, which led to medical bills, a pay cut because he could not do his previous work, and eventually the loss of their car from failure to make loan repayments. Her mother found work in the catalog-order department at Sears, and Warren started work as a waitress at her aunt's restaurant to help the family finances.

She was a star member of the debate team at Northwest Classen High School, and won the title of "Oklahoma's top high-school debater" while competing with debate teams from high schools throughout the state. She also won a debate scholarship to George Washington University at the age of 16. Initially aspiring to be a teacher, she left GWU after two years to marry her high-school boyfriend Jim Warren. She moved to Houston with her husband, who was a NASA engineer. There she enrolled in the University of Houston and graduated in 1970 with a degree in speech pathology and audiology. For a year, she taught children with disabilities in a public school, based on an "emergency certificate", as she had not taken the education courses required for a regular teaching certificate.

Warren and her husband moved to New Jersey for his work, where she decided to become a stay-at-home mom after becoming pregnant with their first child. After her daughter turned two, Warren enrolled at the Rutgers School of Law–Newark. She worked as a summer associate at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft. Shortly before her graduation in 1976, Warren became pregnant with her second child, and began to work as a lawyer from home, writing wills and doing real estate closings.

After having two children, Amelia and Alexander Warren, she and Jim Warren divorced in 1978, but she kept her Warren surname. In 1980, Warren married Bruce Mann, a Harvard law professor. Elizabeth Warren has written two books and several articles with her daughter Amelia.