Christine Gregoire (; née O'Grady; born March 24, 1947) is an American politician who served as the 22nd governor of Washington from 2005 to 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, she defeated Republican candidate Dino Rossi in 2004, and again in 2008. She is the second female governor of Washington. Gregoire chaired the National Governors Association for the 2010–2011 term. She also served on the Governors' Council of the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, D. C. Early life, education, and legal career Gregoire was born in Adrian, Michigan. She was raised in Auburn, Washington, by her mother, Sybil Grace Jacobs (née Palmer), who worked as a short-order cook. After graduating from Auburn Senior High School, she attended the University of Washington in Seattle, graduating in 1969 with a Bachelor of Arts in speech and sociology. At UW, she became a member of the Sigma Iota chapter of the Kappa Delta sorority. She then attended law school at Gonzaga University in Spokane, receiving her Juris Doctor in 1977. Gregoire went to work as an assistant attorney general in the office of State Attorney General Slade Gorton, a Republican. As an assistant attorney general, Gregoire concentrated on child-abuse cases, coordinating with social workers to get children removed from abusive family situations and placed with relatives or foster homes, and was later appointed as the first female Deputy Attorney General. In 1988, at the end of his first term as governor of Washington, Booth Gardner appointed Gregoire director of the Washington Department of Ecology. During her tenure, Gregoire worked with Gardner to reach an agreement with the federal government to clean up nuclear waste at the Hanford nuclear site. Director of the Department of Ecology Gregoire served four years as director before running for attorney general in 1992. During her tenure, she oversaw the creation of the Pacific States/British Columbia Oil Spill Task Force. Following an oil spill off the coast of Washington and British Columbia involving the barge Nestucca, Gregoire coordinated with the Canadian government to form a task force to handle concerns West Coast citizens had surrounding oil transportation. Hanford Cleanup While at the Department of Ecology, Gregoire worked with Gardner and representatives from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Energy to coordinate efforts on the Hanford Site cleanup. Known by many names, including the Hanford Project, Hanford Works, Hanford Engineer Works, and Hanford Nuclear