Harman, Jane, 1945-

Jane Margaret Lakes Harman (born June 28, 1945) is the former U.S. Representative for California's 36th congressional district, serving from 1993 to 1999, and from 2001 to 2011; she is a member of the Democratic Party. Harman was the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and the Homeland Security Committee's intelligence subcommittee. When Democrats held the House majority, she was in line to chair the House intelligence committee but was denied the post by then-Speaker Pelosi. Resigning from Congress in February 2011, Harman became President and CEO of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She succeeded former Congressman Lee H. Hamilton and is the first woman to lead the organization.

Born Jane Margaret Lakes in New York City, her family moved to Los Angeles when she was four year olds. There, she attended Los Angeles public schools, graduating from University High School in 1962. She received a bachelor's degree in government with honors from Smith College in 1966 and graduated magna cum laude and served as president of the Smith College Young Democrats. Harman continued her studies at Harvard Law School, where she earned her Juris Doctor degree in 1969. After graduating from law school, Harman - then known as Jane Lakes - married future NOAA administrator Richard A. Frank in 1969. She spent a short time in Switzerland before working for two years as an associate with the law firm Surrey, Karasik and Morse in Washington, DC. She began her political career by serving on the staff of Senator John V. Tunney, and as his staff director from 1972-73. In 1973, Tunney named her his chief counsel and staff director for the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights. During this time she also taught at Georgetown. When Tunney lost re-election in 1976, Harman - then known as Jane Lakes Frank - joined the Carter White House where she served as special counsel to the Department of Defense, and as Deputy Secretary of the Cabinet. She made headlines in 1978, when she quit to spend more time with her children. She and her husband, Richard Frank divorced the same year. Two years later, she married Sidney Harman, who she had met in the White House when he was her first husband's boss. Through the 1980s, Jane Harman worked as a corporate lawyer and as a director of her husband's company, Harman International Industries.

Harman first pursued elected office in 1992, when she ran for a newly drawn congressional seat that ran along the coast of southern California from Venice to Long Beach. Prevailing in the primary and general elections, she became the first Smith College graduate to be elected to Congress. A centrist, she joined the Democratic Blue Dog Coalition, which sought limited and targeted federal spending policies and supported the high-tech defense industry in her district as it adjusted to the new world order. In 1998 Harman pursued the Democratic nomination for California governor, foregoing a fourth House term. She ultimately placed third in the Democratic primary. In 2000 Harman reclaimed her House seat by narrowly defeating the incumbent, Republican Steven T. Kuykendall. In the next five election cycles, following reapportionment that added the city of Wilmington and removed the Palos Verdes Peninsula to make her district more Democratic, Harman secured nearly 60 percent of the vote or more against her opponents.

Harman won re-election to her ninth term in 2010, but she resigned on February 28, 2011, to head the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars. In her farewell speech to the House on February 18, Harman said, “As a lifelong, passionate, bipartisan-in-my-bones Democrat I have been criticized by both sides. But the center is where, in my view, most Americans are—and where, in many cases, the best policy answers are. I will bring that perspective with me to my new post at the Wilson Center."