*This is an archive page. The links are no longer being updated.
1993.04.07 :  Appointment -- Peter Edelman

Contact: Campbell Gardett  (202) 690-6343  
April 7, 1993

       HHS Secretary Donna E. Shalala has announced that she will
appoint Peter B. Edelman, 55, of Washington, D.C., as counselor
to the secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services.
       In that role, Edelman will provide advice on and oversee
special initiatives, especially on interagency issues.  Among his
first assignments, he is serving as a senior advisor to the White
House Office of National Service on the development of the
President's National Service Plan.
       Edelman comes to HHS from the Georgetown University Law
Center where since 1982 he has taught constitutional law, civil
procedure, administrative law, a family poverty clinic,
legislation and social welfare law.  From 1989 to 1992, he was
also associate dean at the law center.  He will complete his
teaching duties at Georgetown for the spring semester before
joining HHS on a full-time basis.
       During 1979-1982, Edelman was a partner in the Washington
offices of Foley & Lardner.  He took six-months leave from the
firm starting in late 1979 to serve as issues director in the
presidential campaign of Senator Edward M. Kennedy.
       In 1975-1979, he was director of the New York State
Division for Youth.  Between 1971 and 1975, he served as vice
president  for university policy at the University of
Massachusetts. 
       Before that, Edelman was associate director of the Robert
F. Kennedy Memorial (1969-1970); legislative assistant to Senator
Robert F. Kennedy (1965-1968); special assistant to Assistant
Attorney General John W. Douglas (1963-1964); law clerk to
Supreme Court Justice Arthur J. Goldberg (1962-1963); and law
clerk to U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Henry J. Friendly (1961-
1962).
       Edelman was born in Minneapolis, Minn.  He received a
bachelor's in economics, magna cum laude, from Harvard College in
1958; and his LL.B., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School in
1961.  
       He has written numerous law review articles and newspaper
op-ed pieces and, during 1989-1990, did monthly columns for the
Legal Times.  In 1991, he co-authored "Adolescence and Poverty:
Challenge for the 1990s," for the Center for National Policy
Press; and "Effective Services for Children and Families: Lessons
From the Past and Strategies for the Future," for National
Academy Press. 
       Edelman's affiliations have included being board chair of
the Center for Community Changes, the Fair Employment Council of
Greater Washington, the Center for Youth Services and the New
World Foundation, and board membership at Common Cause, the
University of the District of Columbia, the Center for National
Policy, the Food Research and Action Center, Public Voice, the 
National Center on Institutions and Alternatives, and the
Foundation for Child Development.  He has also served as
government relations committee chair of the Association of
American Law Schools, youth advisory committee chair of the
Southern Education Foundation and as a member of the advisory
board for the documentary Eyes on the Prize.

       He and his wife, Marian Wright Edelman, president of the
Children's Defense Fund, have three children: Joshua, Jonah and
Ezra.
                                ###