Gina Raimondo

Raimondo was born on May 17, 1971, in Rhode Island and grew up in Smithfield in an Italian-American family, the youngest of Joseph and Josephine Raimondo’s three children. Her father, a World War II Navy veteran, lost his job along with hundreds of others after 26 years in manufacturing when the factory moved overseas.⁠[1][2][2][2][2][2][2]

As a teenager she rode a public bus to LaSalle Academy in Providence, where she was valedictorian of her class. She graduated with honors from HarvardHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry, where she was recognized as the top economics student in her class; she then won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, where she earned a doctorate and met her future husband, Andy Moffit; she later graduated from Yale Law School.⁠[2][2][2][2][2][2][2]

After law school, Raimondo clerked for U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood and became a founding employee and senior vice president at the venture capital firm Village Ventures. Wanting to return to Rhode Island and be closer to her family, she co-founded the early-stage venture capital firm Point Judith Capital.⁠[1][1]

In November 2010, Raimondo was elected General Treasurer of Rhode Island, receiving the largest number of votes of any statewide candidate that year. On taking office, she set about addressing the state’s roughly $7 billion unfunded pension liability.⁠[1][2][2]

On October 18, 2011, Governor Lincoln D. Chafee and General Treasurer Raimondo unveiled the pension reform bill, the Rhode Island Retirement Security Act of 2011 (RIRSA), before a joint session of the General Assembly, projecting that it would reduce the pension system’s unfunded liability by $3 billion. Raimondo said redesigning the state pension system was in the interest of every Rhode Islander.⁠[3][3][3]

In November 2011, the act passed the state House by a vote of 57 to 15 and the state Senate by a vote of 35 to 2.⁠[4]

The act was subsequently challenged in court. On December 18, 2012, Raimondo issued a statement on that day’s court proceedings, saying the state had “a very strong case” and would participate in court-ordered mediation in good faith.⁠[4][4]

On June 9, 2015, Rhode Island Superior Court Judge Sarah Taft-Carter approved the pension settlement agreement; Raimondo, then governor, said the settlement was in the best long-term interests of all Rhode Islanders and that she looked forward to working with the General Assembly to pass legislation finalizing it.⁠[5][5][5]

On January 6, 2015, Raimondo took office as the 75th Governor of Rhode Island, becoming the state’s first woman governor; she won a second term in 2018 and served as chair of the Democratic Governors Association in 2019.⁠[1][1][2][2][2]

As governor, she made record investments in infrastructure, education, and job training and launched business-led workforce partnerships aimed at specific labor shortages. She later recalled that, as a Democrat, she cut taxes every year in office and was criticized for being too close to business.⁠[2][2][2][6][6]

Raimondo was nominated by the president to be Secretary of Commerce. On January 26, 2021, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation held a hearing on the nomination.⁠[7]

On March 2, 2021, the Senate confirmed Raimondo as Secretary of Commerce by a vote of 84 to 15; she resigned as governor the same day.⁠[8][1][1]

Before the confirmation, Republican Senator Ted Cruz placed a hold on the nomination over her refusal to commit to continue restricting Huawei’s access to American markets; Republican Senators including Kevin Cramer, John Kennedy, and Rick Scott also cited her positions on China in voting against her.⁠[9][9]

On March 3, 2021, Raimondo was sworn in by Vice President Kamala Harris as the 40th U.S. Secretary of Commerce. In office, she drove implementation of the American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act, announced more than $40 billion in internet access grants and more than $500 million for regional technology and innovation hubs, and established the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity uniting 14 countries.⁠[2][2][10][10][10][10]

On August 9, 2022, President Biden signed the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 to strengthen U.S. semiconductor research and production. The Commerce Department then began deploying its $39 billion in incentives for leading-edge chip manufacturing and $11 billion for research and development; Raimondo championed the roughly $52.7 billion act while in office.⁠[11][11][10][12]

On October 7, 2022, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security announced export controls on advanced computing and semiconductor manufacturing items to China, restricting China’s ability to purchase and manufacture certain high-end chips used in military applications. Raimondo oversaw the department’s export controls and sanctions while in office, and later said she was the person who decided what AI chips China could and could not get.⁠[13][13][6][6]

Raimondo set up the U.S. AI Safety Institute within the Commerce Department, building a team to test models before release, mostly for national security and cyber risks. On February 8, 2024, she announced the U.S. AI Safety Institute Consortium (AISIC), housed under the institute, with more than 200 initial member companies and organizations.⁠[10][6][6][14][14]

On November 15, 2024, the Commerce Department awarded TSMC Arizona, a subsidiary of TSMC, up to $6.6 billion in direct funding to support its planned investment of more than $65 billion in three leading-edge fabs in Phoenix, Arizona. Raimondo called the investment a turning point for American innovation and manufacturing.⁠[15][15][15]

Raimondo served as Secretary of Commerce until January 20, 2025, when the Biden administration’s term ended.⁠[10]

On April 14, 2026, Raimondo gave a talk at TED2026 titled “A plan to stop AI from automating our decline.” She said that if the United States led in chips and models but displaced millions of workers, it would lose the global AI race and “we will have automated our decline”; she said her worry was the near-term disruption to workers during the transition to an AI economy, and that “we owe them a plan.”⁠[16][16][16][16][16]

In the talk she opposed slowing or overregulating AI and also rejected universal basic income, proposing instead to fund schools and training programs based on employment outcomes, to offer temporary wage support to workers who take a pay cut to change fields, and to pilot tax credits and other incentives so that abandoning workers costs companies more than retraining them. She also cited her father’s experience: when the Bulova watch factory closed in the early 1980s, he lost the job he had held for almost 30 years.⁠[16][16][16][16][16][16]

In June 2026, asked on The Boston Globe’s Rhode Island Report podcast whether she was considering a presidential run, Raimondo said, “I don’t think so,” adding that she would help whichever Democrat emerged. She said the Democratic Party should be the party “obsessed with rebuilding the middle class” rather than “the party of the checklist.”⁠[12][12][12]

On June 25, 2026, Raimondo and Republican former Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb announced the bipartisan nonprofit RAISE US, starting with more than $500 million for new forms of education and training and focusing on partnerships with states and major employers; Raimondo became its chief executive officer. Its first partner states were Arkansas, Connecticut, Maryland, and Utah.⁠[17][18][18][18][18]

In an interview with NPR, Raimondo listed participating companies including Amazon, AnthropicAnthropicAnthropic is an artificial intelligence research and product company founded in 2021 that develops the Claude models, assistant, and tools such as Claude Code, and operates as a public benefit corporation. Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei are its co-founders, and its research covers model safety, interpretability, and steerability.Open the full entry, the OpenAI Foundation, UPS, General Motors, IBM, AMD, and Workday; she said Americans were right to worry about AI’s impact on jobs because no one had yet come forward with a plan.⁠[17][17][17]

On August 26, 2026, Raimondo was interviewed by CNBCCNBCCNBC is an American business and financial news cable channel launched by NBC in 1989; it merged with its rival FNN in 1991 and since January 2026 has been part of Versant Media Group, spun off from Comcast.Open the full entry’s Julia Boorstin; the conversation was released on September 29 as the first episode of the second season of the CNBC Changemakers podcast. Describing herself as an AI optimist, she said the worst case was that the United States had no plan to ensure every American could have a good job in the age of AI: the technology would move fast, “tens of millions of Americans will be put out of work or underemployed,” there could be an economic recession that is “deep and long,” and even rioting in the streets, followed by regulation that would stop AI innovation.⁠[19][19][6][6][6][6][6][6][6]

She said that AI, like every other technology, would create more new jobs in some number of years, but that a planned transition was needed; she also said Congress would not pass effective bipartisan legislation to help workers in the next three years, so RAISE US was piloting measures with governors and companies, such as a year of service for young people in Maryland, a job-navigation tool for people filing for unemployment insurance in Arkansas, and wage insurance for workers who take lower-paid jobs.⁠[6][6][6][6][6][6][6][6][6]

On September 9, 2026, Brown UniversityBrown UniversityBrown University is a private nonprofit research university in Providence, Rhode Island, and a member of the Ivy League. Chartered by Rhode Island's colonial legislature in 1764, it is known for its undergraduate Open Curriculum, which has no common required core. Christina H. Paxson, president since July 2012, announced on August 3, 2026, that the 2026–27 academic year would be her last in office. As of October 1, 2026, the search for Brown's 20th president remained underway.Open the full entry’s Watson School of International and Public Affairs announced that Raimondo had joined its Senior Fellows program for fall 2026 as Senior Fellow in International and Public Affairs.⁠[10][10]

Raimondo has been named to TIMETIMETIME is an American newsmagazine and media brand founded by Henry Luce and Briton Hadden, which published its first issue on March 3, 1923; it is headquartered in New York and known for its Person of the Year selection and the TIME100 list. Since 2018 it has been personally owned by Marc and Lynne Benioff; its current Chief Executive Officer is Jessica Sibley, and its Editor-in-Chief is Sam Jacobs.Open the full entry magazine’s 100 Most Influential People and its list of the Most Influential People in AI, and has received the CIA Director’s Award, the Brennan Center Legacy Award, the Business Executives for National Security Eisenhower Award, and the Atlantic Council Distinguished Leadership Award.⁠[10][10]