Kathleen Kennedy Townsend has a long history of accomplishments in the public arena. As the State of Maryland's first woman Lt. Governor, for two terms Mrs. Townsend was in charge of a multimillion dollar budget that included oversight of six major cabinet departments in the areas of criminal justice and economic development.

Before being elected Lt. Governor, Mrs. Townsend served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the United States. She was also the founder of the Maryland Student Service Alliance that she led in the fight to make Maryland the first state in the nation to require that all high school students perform community service as a prerequisite to earning a high school diploma. Mrs. Townsend is currently an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University's School of Public Policy and is a Visiting Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

Mrs. Townsend is the chairman of the Institute for Human Virology and currently serves on several boards including the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, the Points of Light Foundation, National Catholic Reporter and the Character Education Partnership. While serving as the chairman of the board of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial, she created the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award. Mrs. Townsend is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

The eldest child of the late Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend lives outside Baltimore, Maryland with her husband, David, a professor at St. John's College in Annapolis. They have four daughters.