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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION
The Inauguration of the 46th President
Jill Biden continued teaching while her husband was vice president, and she plans to do the same as fi rst lady. TORI LYNN SCHNEIDER/TALLAHASSEE DEMOCRAT
Jill Biden ready to go back to work Incoming fi rst lady plans to keep her day job Maria Puente USA TODAY
The fi rst thing to know about Jill Biden — a college professor with four degrees, including a doctorate — is that she is going to be a very busy fi rst lady, since she plans to keep her day job after moving into the White House. After all, she continued teaching English at Northern Virginia Community College during the eight years her husband was vice president. Her plan to pursue her career and keep a paying job sets her apart from her predecessors in the 232-year history of presidential spouses. “She will really be bringing the role of fi rst lady into the 21st century,” says Katherine Jellison, a history professor at Ohio University and recognized expert on fi rst ladies. Jellison notes that no previous wife of a president has been “allowed” to be like most modern American women, with both a work life and a family life.
“Americans have historically wanted their fi rst ladies to be in the White House and at the president’s side whenever possible,” Jellison says. “The winds of change are blowing because the country keeps moving; this was bound to happen,” says Anita McBride, who was chief of staff to former fi rst lady Laura Bush and an assistant to President George W. Bush, and now runs the Legacies of America’s First Ladies Initiative at American University’s School of Public Aff airs.
A professorial calm There’s another thing to know about Jill Biden, and about Joe Biden: They project serenity, which turned out to be a vital quality in the 2020 election. The Bidens come to the White House after a tight election and a slow vote count (due to the huge number of pandemic-inspired mail-in ballots), made even more tense by the angry public rantings of the incumbent president, who tried to
stop the vote counts, fi led lawsuits in multiple states, shouted unfounded allegations about fraud and hinted that he might not accept the results. Throughout, both Bidens remained calm and pressed for everyone else to do the same. It’s likely to be the same once Jill Biden takes up the role of fi rst lady. Considering her profession, you can count on education being at the top of Biden’s fi rst-lady agenda, along with advocating for military families and cancer awareness (son Beau Biden, an Army veteran, died of brain cancer in 2015), all of which she pursued as second lady. “The beauty of (being fi rst lady) is that you can defi ne it however you want,” she told Vogue in July 2019. “And that’s what I did as second lady — I defi ned that role the way I wanted it to be. I would still work on all the same issues.” But fi rst lady is a higher-level job in terms of attention and pressure. Can she really do it all? “I would love to. If we get to the White House, I’m going to continue to teach,” she said in an interview with “CBS Sunday Morning” in August. “I want people to value teachers and know their con-
