Donna Shalala
Donna Shalala
Donna Edna Shalalawas the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 2001. She was the president of the University of Miami, a private university in Coral Gables, Florida, from 2001 through 2015. Previously, she was the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1988 to 1993. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, by President George W. Bush in June 2008. Shalala currently serves as the...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPublic Servant
Date of Birth14 February 1941
CountryUnited States of America
I get to work at about 7:30 or 8 unless I have a breakfast meeting.
Most of the calories in a healthy diet should come from fruits, vegetables and grain products. That recommendation makes it even more critical for government and industry to work together to ensure that fresh produce is wholesome and safe.
It's coaches. It's people that are involved in kids' lives at every level, and it's supporting their parents. Their parents need better jobs. So that they can help them with their homework and don't have to work two jobs.
This early report is very promising and shows that we are making progress in moving parents on welfare into jobs or giving them the work skills they need to get a job,
The economic dimension is very clear. I was at a dinner party, a mother got up, who's a very distinguished scientist, and said she had to get home and help her daughter with her homework. The two waiters, their faces changed. They were working their second jobs, they couldn't get home to help their kids with homework.
You go to college not only for the latest knowledge but also to meet people from different backgrounds. That's the genius of the American higher-education system compared with the Europeans'. We don't simply skim the elite.
But for me, it is when a student has died. I find the death of a young person the most difficult and painful of times. To explain it to other young people, to see a bright future snuffed out, is just awful. I am haunted by those deaths.
Higher education is one of few areas where this country competes with the rest of the world and wins. The best of American higher education outstrips any in the world. Look where the rest of the world goes for higher education, for graduate degrees. They come here.
We're moving very rapidly into quality measures, so that Americans can control their own health care and have a better sense of which plan will provide them with quality health care,
We are living longer, and we need to live better.
We need to drive down requirements for the schools. In the 19th century, we increased the quality of the schools by higher education saying, 'You can't come in unless you have these skills, unless you've taken these courses.' We did that in Wisconsin when I was there, it helped to transform the secondary school system.
I have to admit, in January and February I was in an absolute fuzz. I had no one on board. It wasn't that I didn't know what I was doing, but we didn't have all the pieces put together.
Every year, I am reminded of the kids who aren't in the freshman class and aren't graduating. I remember every single one of them. That is the worst of times for me, to see the future snuffed out.
You don't want to destroy the energy that comes out of a campaign.