Jennifer Granholm - Early Life, Education, and Early Career

Early Life, Education, and Early Career

Granholm was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, to Shirley Alfreda (née Dowden) and Victor Ivar Granholm. Granholm's paternal grandfather, who immigrated to Canada in the 1930s, came from Robertsfors, Sweden, where his father was mayor. The Minister for Enterprise and Energy and former Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden, Maud Olofsson, lives in Robertsfors, and when the two met in Sweden, it was revealed that Olofsson's husband is a relative of Granholm's.

Granholm's paternal grandmother was an emigrant from Norway. Granholm's family moved to California when she was four. She grew up in Anaheim, San Jose, and San Carlos. Granholm graduated from San Carlos High School in 1977. She won the Miss San Carlos beauty pageant. As a young adult she attempted to launch a Hollywood acting career but was unsuccessful and abandoned her efforts at the age of 21. In 1978 she appeared on The Dating Game, with a video recently surfacing. She held jobs as a tour guide at Universal Studios and in customer service at the Los Angeles Times and was the first female tour guide at Marine World Africa USA in Redwood City, piloting boats with 25 tourists aboard. In 1980 she became a U.S. citizen, worked for John Anderson's independent run for President of the United States, and enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley. She graduated from UC-Berkeley in 1984 Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in political science and French. Granholm then earned a juris doctor degree at Harvard Law School, also with honors.

She clerked for Judge Damon Keith, a Senior Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. In 1990 she became an assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. In 1994 she was appointed to the Wayne County Corporation Counsel.