Senator Kirsten Gillibrand

U.S. Senator from New York at United States Senate

About This Expert

Kirsten Gillibrand was first sworn in as United States Senator from New York in January 2009. In November 2012, Gillibrand was elected to her first six-year Senate term with a historic 72 percent of the vote, winning 60 of New York’s 62 counties.

Prior to her service in the Senate, Gillibrand served in the U.S. House of Representatives, representing New York’s 20th Congressional District, which spanned 10 counties in upstate New York.

Throughout her time in Congress, Senator Gillibrand has been committed to open and honest government. When she was first elected, she pledged to bring unprecedented transparency and access to her post. She became the first Member of Congress to post her official public schedule, personal financial disclosure, and federal earmark requests online. The New York Times called Gillibrand’s commitment to transparency a “quiet touch of revolution” in Washington, and The Sunlight Foundation, the leading advocacy organization dedicated to making government more open and transparent, praised Senator Gillibrand as a pioneer for her work. For more information, visit Senator Gillibrand’s Sunlight Report at http://gillibrand.senate.gov/sunlight/

And she hasn’t let up since. In 2012, Senator Gillibrand became the first Senator in history to publish her personal tax returns for every year she has served in office directly on her own website, and led the effort to pass the STOCK Act, legislation to finally make insider trading by members of Congress illegal, making them play by the exact same set of rules as every other American. A Washington Post report hailed the STOCK Act as the “most substantial debate on congressional ethics in nearly five years.”

In the U.S. Senate, Senator Gillibrand has made her presence felt, helping lead the fight to repeal “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” the policy that banned gays from serving openly in the military, and providing health care and compensation to the 9/11 first responders and community survivors who are sick with diseases caused by the toxins at Ground Zero. Senator Gillibrand worked to bring Democrats and Republicans together to win both legislative victories, leading Newsweek/The Daily Beast to name Senator Gillibrand one of “150 Women Who Shake the World.”

From her seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gillibrand has been a vocal advocate for strengthening America’s armed services, national security and military readiness. In 2013, as chair of the sub-committee on personnel, she held the first Senate hearing on the issue of sexual assault in the military in almost a decade. Gillibrand went on to lead the fight in reforming how the military handles sexual assault cases, building a broad bipartisan coalition of 55 Senators in support of legislation to remove sexual assault cases from the chain of command.

In April 2014, in honor of her ability to work across the aisle and elevate the issues that are important to her, Gillibrand was named one of Time Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People In The World.”

Senator Gillibrand’s number one priority is to rebuild the American economy, by creating good-paying jobs, helping small businesses get loans, and partnering with the private sector to foster innovation and entrepreneurship. She wrote new legislation to strengthen and retool New York’s manufacturers, stamp more products with the words “Made in America,” and create new manufacturing jobs in New York.

Born and raised in upstate New York, Senator Gillibrand’s home is in Brunswick, New York, with her husband, Jonathan Gillibrand, and their two young sons, ten-year-old Theodore and six-year-old Henry.