Anne Holton, Neighbor

Anne Holton has devoted her career to serving as an advocate for Virginia’s families and children. Anne graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 1980. Three years later, she earned her J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she met her future husband, Tim Kaine, and graduated cum laude.

Following graduation
from law school, Anne
served as a law clerk for U.S. District Court Judge Robert R. Merhige, Jr., in Richmond, Virginia. From 1985 to 1998, she worked as an attorney for the Central Virginia Legal Aid Society, where she helped create an award­ winning volunteer lawyers’ program in Richmond. From 1998 to 2005, she served as a judge on the Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court for the City of Richmond. Anne was chief judge of the court from 2000 to 2003. She resigned from the bench in December 2005, following her husband’s election as Governor.

As First Lady, she launched her signature initiative in January of 2007, “For Keeps: Families for all Virginia Teens,” which helped Virginia find and strengthen permanent family connections for older children in foster care or children at risk of entering care. Beginning in late 2007, she helped lead the Virginia Children’s Services Transformation, which resulted in a dramatic increase in successfully placing and/or keeping at­ risk children in permanent families.

While Anne was born in Roanoke, Virginia, her move back to the Governor’s Mansion when her husband was elected in 2005 was a homecoming. Her father, Linwood Holton, served as Virginia’s governor while Anne was a teenager, from 1970­1974. Following Thomas Jefferson’s daughter, Martha “Patsy” Jefferson Randolph, Anne is the second daughter of a Virginia Governor to become First Lady of Virginia. She and Tim have three children, Nat, Woody and Annella, and a family dog, Gina.

Since leaving the mansion again, Anne has served on many local boards including Voices of Virginia’s Children, Richmond Public Schools Education Foundation, and the Advisory Board of Youth­Nex: The U.Va Center to Promote Effective Youth Development at the Curry School of Education. She currently consults for the Annie E. Casey Foundation, continuing her work as a children’s welfare advocate.

Anne has received many awards and honors for her work, including the YWCA of Richmond’s “Outstanding Woman of the Year in Law” in 2006 and the Annie E. Casey Foundation Families for Life’s “Award of Distinction” in 2008.