Katrina Swett | |
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Katrina and Dick Swett, at 2008 Milford Labor Day parade
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Personal details | |
Born |
Yvonne Katrina Lantos October 8, 1955 Concord, New Hampshire |
Political party | Democratic |
Spouse(s) | Richard Swett (m. 1980) |
Children | 7 |
Residence | Bow, New Hampshire |
Alma mater |
Yale College B.A. 1974 Hastings College of Law J.D. 1976 University of Southern Denmark Ph.D. 2006 |
Profession | Professor |
Religion | The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) |
Katrina Swett (born October 8, 1955) is an American educator and the former chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom from 2012 to 2013, and then in 2014 to 2015. She ran unsuccessfully as the Democratic candidate for Congress in New Hampshire's 2nd congressional district during the 2002 United States midterm elections.
Swett is a second-generation American. Her father, the late congressman Tom Lantos (D-CA), a Holocaust survivor, and her mother, Annette Tillemann Lantos, came to the United States from Hungary after World War II. Katrina Swett has a sister, Annette.
She skipped high school, entered college at 14, and transferred to Yale where her older sister Annette was a student. She earned a degree in Political Science there in 1974 at 18, and her Juris Doctor in 1976 from the University of California, Hastings College of Law. At 21, she joined the staff of then U.S. Senator Joseph Biden, Jr.'s Senate Judiciary Committee. In 2006 she earned her Ph.D. in History with a focus on Human Rights and United States Foreign Policy from the University of Southern Denmark.