Karenna Gore Schiff
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Karenna Gore Schiff (born August 6, 1973) is the eldest daughter of former Vice President Al Gore and Tipper Gore. She was named after the protagonist in Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, which Tipper read during her pregnancy.
Karenna Gore Schiff is mostly known for supporting her father 2000 campaign in an official capacity. She was actively and publicly involved with her father's campaign as the Youth Outreach Chair, including heading up GoreNet.com, as well as acting as one of her father's closest advisers. Together with Al Gore's former Harvard room mate Tommy Lee Jones, she officially nominated her father as the presidential candidate at the 2000 Democratic Convention in LA. She is the only child of a candidate to have officially nominated their parent or to be so demonstratively involved in a presidential campaign, although her involvement received mixed reviews: she was criticised for being too inexperienced to be an effective advisor (especially by conservative camps), and specifically for introducing Naomi Wolf as an early campaign advisor to overhaul her father’s image. She was also positively regarded adding a softening and grounding 'family appeal' to the campaign. She has stated that in hindsight she would assume a more formal role (Vanity Fair, February 2006).
She is currently the Director of Community Affairs for the Association to Benefit Children (ABC), a nonprofit group with a $13 million annual budget. She also contributes articles to Glamour Magazine. In 2006, Karenna released a book, published by Miramax, entitled "Lighting the Way: Nine Women Who Shaped Modern America," a book for which she received a $200,000 advance(ISBN 1-4013-5218-9). She received favorable reviews for describing the lives of nine unheralded women who have contributed to US public and political life.
She attended the National Cathedral School in Washington, D.C., Harvard University (as did her father), where she graduated in English and History, and holds a post graduate law degree from Columbia Law School.
Previous achievements include winning the Tennessee Water Skiing Championships in 1991, when Karenna was just 17 (and her father was still a Senator) and being placed first in the jumping and slalom categories at West Memphis, Arkansas.
While in college, Karenna was a news intern at Memphis, Tennessee's WREG-TV and at the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Following graduation, she was on the staff of El Pais in Madrid, Spain for one year, and at Slate Magazine in Seattle. In 2001 Karenna briefly worked as an associate at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, a prominent New York City law firm. However, she stayed there less than a year, stating that the job was not for her.
On 12 July 1997, Karenna married Dr. Andrew Schiff, an internist from a prominent New York banking family, and the great-grandson of industrialist Jacob Schiff. Karenna lives in New York with her husband and two children, Wyatt Gore Schiff (born 4 July 1999) and Anna Hunger Schiff (born 21 August 2001). She is currently pregnant with her third child. Given her prominent role in the 2000 presidential campaign, Karenna is often described as a potential Democratic candidate. Talking about a possible future political career, Karenna said in an interview with The Hill, "Sometime in my life, I might want to run for elective office... but I am conflicted about what goes into it. Right now my kids are so little, and I have more work to do in building a separate professional identity."
