Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg Biography

Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg

Caroline, the daughter of John F. and Jacqueline Kennedy, was born in New York while her father was serving as a senator from Massachusetts. Just three years old when her father became president, she was famous for riding a pony on the White House lawn. After President Kennedy's assassination, the family moved to New York City where Caroline attended a private school. While at the Concord Academy in Massachusetts, she developed an interest in film and photography and worked on a documentary about coal miners in Tennessee. At Harvard she majored in fine arts, and during the summers her uncle Ted insisted she work in his senate office. She interned at the New York Daily News and in 1977, she attended and wrote an article about Elvis Presley's funeral for Rolling Stone. After Harvard, she worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she met her husband, Edwin Schlossberg, an avant-garde artist and designer. In 1988, the same year she graduated from Columbia Law School, she gave birth to the first of three children, Rose, Tatiana, and John.

Kennedy has written a number of books. She and her law school friend, Ellen Alderman, wrote a book about the Bill of Rights, In Our Defense, in 1990. In 1995, they collaborated on The Right to Privacy. In 2001, she selected The Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy and in 2002, she was inspired by her father's book and wrote Profiles in Courage for Our Time. A Patriot's Handbook: Songs, Poems, Stories and Speeches Celebrating the Land We Love was published in the spring of 2003.

She helped found the Profile in Courage Awards in 1989, designed to honor politically brave public officials. After her mother's death in 1994, Caroline, who had shied away from public life, became more visible in the cultural and charitable arenas. As well as becoming honorable chairwoman of the New York City Ballet, she joined the Board of the Citizens Committee for New York City, an organization supporting volunteer service, and took over the presidency of the Kennedy Library Foundation in Boston. She addressed the 2000 Democratic Convention, but public service rather than political office seems to be her goal. In 2002 she accepted a post with the New York City Department of Education, in charge of garnering private-sector aid for public schools.