The eldest of six daughters, Chao was born in Taipei, Taiwan, to James S.C. Chao ( Zhào Xīchéng), a Shanghainese entrepreneur, and Ruth Mu-lan Chu (Zhū Mùlán), a historian. Her parents had fled to Taiwan from mainland China after the Chinese Communists took over as a result of the Chinese Civil War in 1949. At the age of eight, Elaine Chao and her family emigrated to the United States, where her father had already settled a few years earlier. She attended Syosset High School on Long Island, New York.
Chao received her B.A. in Economics from Mount Holyoke College in 1975 and her MBA from the Harvard Business School in 1979. Chao also studied at MIT, Dartmouth College, and Columbia University. She is the recipient of 31 honorary doctoral degrees from colleges and universities around the world.
In 1986, Chao returned to Washington D.C. as Deputy Administrator of the Maritime Administration in the US Department of Transportation. From 1988 to 1989, she served as Chairwoman of the Federal Maritime Commission.
In 1989, President George H. W. Bush nominated Chao to be Deputy Secretary of Transportation, the number two position in the department. From 1991 to 1992, Chao was Director of the Peace Corps. She was the first Asian American to serve in any of these positions. She expanded the Peace Corps’s presence in Eastern Europe and Central Asia by establishing the first Peace Corps programs in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, and other newly independent states of the former Soviet Union.
Following her service in the government, Chao worked for four years as President and Chief Executive Officer of United Way of America. She is credited with returning credibility and public trust back to the organization after an embarrassing financial mismanagement scandal involving former United Way of America president William Aramony. From 1996 until her appointment as Secretary of Labor, Chao was a Distinguished Fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank.
During Secretary Chao’s tenure, the Department of Labor updated the white collar overtime regulations under the Fair Labor Standards Act, which has been on the agenda of every Administration since 1977. Complaints from the business community about their losses in overtime-related litigation spurred the Bush Administration to act on the controversial changes. In 2003, the Department achieved the first major update of union financial disclosure regulations in more than 40 years, giving rank and file members enhanced information on how their dues are spent. The Department has set new worker protection enforcement records, including recovering record back wages for vulnerable low-wage immigrant workers. The Department has also launched comprehensive reform of the nation’s publicly funded worker training programs. In 2006 and 2007, the Department successfully implemented the Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act of 2006 (MINER Act). On August 17, 2006, President Bush signed the Pension Protection Act, which protects the 44 million workers whose retirement security rests upon private sector defined benefit pension plans.
The longest-serving Secretary of Labor since Frances Perkins, Secretary Chao placed great emphasis on staffing, often stating that “personnel is policy.” Presidential appointees and non-career members of the Senior Executive Service reporting to Secretary Chao served on average far longer than the typical 18-month tenure associated with executive branch political appointees. The average stay for the Department’s presidential appointees under Secretary Chao was 5.3 years. The average tenure for non-career members of the Senior Executive Service at the Department serving under Secretary Chao was 5.4 years. Secretary Chao’s sustained focus on strategic management of human capital helped the Department achieve record results in its enforcement programs and 12 straight clean audit opinions.
After Donald Rumsfeld had stepped down from his position as Secretary of Defense in November 2006, she became the only original Cabinet member still serving in the Bush Administration in the same position to which she was appointed.