Хейзел Рид О’Лири: Американ саяхатшысы, саяси қайраткер және университет администраторы

American government official and university administrator

Hazel Reid O'Leary (born May 17, 1937) is an American lawyer, politician and university administrator who served as the 7th United States secretary of energy from 1993 to 1997. A member of the Democratic Party, O'Leary was the first woman and first African American to hold that post. She also served as the 14th president of Fisk University from 2004 to 2013, a historically black college and her alma mater. O'Leary's tenure at Fisk came amid financial difficulty for the school, during which time she increased enrollment and contentiously used the school's art collection to raise funds. O'Leary received her bachelor's degree from Fisk before earning her Bachelor of Laws degree from Rutgers School of Law. O'Leary worked as a prosecutor in New Jersey and then in a private consulting/accounting firm before joining the Carter administration. O'Leary returned to the private sector and rejoined the government as secretary of energy under President Bill Clinton. During her tenure, she declassified documents detailing how the United States had conducted secret testing on the effects of radiation on unsuspecting American citizens. She also received criticism for her excessive spending while in office.

Hazel Reid was born in Newport News, Virginia. Her parents, Russel E. Reid and Hazel Reid, were both physicians. They divorced when she was 18 months old. Her father and stepmother, a teacher named Mattie Pullman Reid, raised Hazel and her older sister Edna Reid, Hazel attended school in a segregated school system in Newport News for eight years. She and her sister were then sent to live with an aunt in Essex County, New Jersey, and attend Arts High School, an integrated school. After Jack died of cancer, Hazel moved to Minnesota.

In a press conference on December 21, 1992, held in Little Rock, Arkansas, then President elect Bill Clinton announced his intention to nominate O'Leary as Secretary of Energy. Clinton officially made the nomination on January20, 1993, and the Senate confirmed O'Leary by unanimous consent the next day. O'Leary became the first woman and first African American to serve as Secretary of Energy. She was also the first Secretary of Energy to have worked for an energy company. At the time she led the Department of Energy, it had an annual budget of $18billion and approximately 18,000 employees. O'Leary challenged the way the department had traditionally been run, particularly its focus on developing and testing nuclear weapons.<! a priority of the Clinton administration. including Cold War era records that showed the U. S. government had used American citizens as guinea pigs in human radiation experiments, as had long been rumored. Clinton issued Executive Order 12891, which created the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE) to prevent such abuses of power. O'Leary also announced a $4.6million settlement payment to the families of victims of past radiation experiments. Her efforts resulted in Clinton signing a test ban on nuclear testing, a ban that other nations joined. A Government Accountability Office audit of travel criticized her for traveling too frequently and spending excessively on accommodations. She apologized to Congressional committees in 1996 for spending that exceeded limits on the funds appropriated to the agency for travel. O'Leary resigned from her position effective January20, 1997, explaining she did not wish to stay in the job more than four years. Reno determined there was "no evidence" of wrongdoing by O'Leary and no basis for a further investigation. Some observers, including a lawyer for the Government Accountability Project, saw some fault in O'Leary's conduct but also saw racism and sexism in the way she was treated. She also sat on the board of the environmental engineering firm ICF Kaiser International. In 2000 she became president and chief operating officer of an investment banking firm, Blaylock & Partners. She was officially installed as the university's 14th president on October6, 2005. Before O'Leary's tenure, the university had tried unsuccessfully to increase its enrollment and experienced financial problems. In 2008 Fisk had an enrollment of 770 students and 264 faculty and staff members. By 2011 Fisk's enrollment numbers improved, The probation ended in December 2013. The Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation opposed the sale, and later the Tennessee State Attorney General opposed any sale of the artwork out of state. Amidst the public battle over attempts to sell the Alfred Stieglitz Collection, O'Leary quietly arranged to sell two other works of art, including a work by Florine Stettheimer.<! Her retirement was effective January31, 2013. She was succeeded by H. James Williams.

O'Leary has served as a director for Alchemix Corp. and CAMAC International Corporation.<!