Who is Tom Vilsack’s wife Christie Vilsack?
CHRISTIE Vilsack, who served as the first lady of Iowa for eight years, has dedicated her life to education and public service.
She is married to Tom Vilsack, who is Joe Biden's choice to become secretary of agriculture.
Who is Christie Vilsack?
Literacy advocate Christie Vilsack served as first lady of Iowa from 1999 to 2007.
Both Christie and her husband have been working for Colorado State University since 2017, and Christie previously taught secondary and college English and journalism for 25 years.
Christie, who is 70, was born and raised in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, and is a graduate and charter class member of Kirkland College in Clinton, New York.
She would later earn a master’s degree in journalism from The University of Iowa.
Christie and Tom have been married since 1973 and they have two sons and four grandchildren.
Has Tom Vilsack served as secretary of agriculture before?
Vilsack, who is 70, under President Barack Obama.
He also served two terms as governor of Iowa.
"I realize that I am back again. But I also realize that this is a fundamentally different time,” he said during testimony before the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee.
“The reality is we lacked openness, fairness and competitiveness and resiliency, as the Covid-19 crisis has shown, in many of our agricultural markets,” he said.
Vilsack has pledged to focus on climate change initiatives and work to address racial inequities in agricultural assistance programs.
Vilsack said the Agriculture Department needed to seriously examine if it was sufficiently supporting farmers of color.
He envisions an “equity taskforce” to identify what he called “intentional or unintentional barriers that make it difficult for people to access the programs.”
He heavily endorsed boosting climate-friendly agricultural industries such as the creation of biofuels.
“Agriculture is one of our first and best ways to get some wins in this climate area,” he said.
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He proposed “building a rural economy based on biomanufacturing” and “turning agricultural waste into a variety of products.”
He vows to work closely with the Environmental Protection Agency to “spur the industry” on biofuels.
His confirmation by the Senate is expected to be a foregone conclusion.