Jennifer Granholm was elected Michigan's first female governor in 2002, and re-elected, to a second term, four years later.

Her work to re-establish Michigan's recession damaged, Rust Belt economy caught the attention of leaders of the democratic party on the national level.

Last December, then president-elect Joe Biden named her his energy secretary.

In 2011, a few months after leaving the governor's office, Granholm and her husband Dan Mulhern wrote a book together.