California Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis endorsed Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden on Wednesday.
“Vice President Biden will bring decency and honor back to the White House. He is the strong, steady, decent leader that our nation so desperately needs to safely put America back to work,” said Kounalakis. “When I served as Ambassador, I worked with Vice President Biden in the Obama Administration to strengthen America’s standing in the world and promote liberty and democratic values. I know first-hand that his expertise and vision on foreign policy equips him to be Commander in Chief on day one.”
Kounalakis became the first woman to be elected Lieutenant Governor of California in 2018. Kounalakis is also a former US ambassador to Hungary.
In an exclusive interview with the Greek Reporter before her election, she spoke of her Greek heritage.
“As Greek-Americans, the culture that founded democracy in ancient Greece so many thousands of years ago, we know you have to have an invested citizenship, that everybody needs to be able to work hard and earn a piece of the pie,” she stated.
She is married to Dr. Markos Kounalakis, and the couple has two teenage sons, Neo and Eon.
She is the daughter of Angelo Tsakopoulos, a Sacramento developer, and grew up as a member of the Greek Orthodox Church.
Kounalakis graduated from Dartmouth College in 1989 and earned her Masters in Business Administration (MBA) from U.C. Berkeley’s Haas School of Business in 1992. She holds an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from the American College of Greece.
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