Betsy DeVos
American politician and philanthropist (born 1958)
Elisabeth Dee DeVos ( də-VOSS; née Prince; born January 8, 1958) is an American politician, philanthropist, and former government official who served as the 11th United States secretary of education from 2017 to 2021. DeVos is known for her conservative political activism, and particularly her support for school choice, school voucher programs, and charter schools. She was Republican national committeewoman for Michigan from 1992 to 1997 and served as chair of the Michigan Republican Party from 1996 to 2000, and again from 2003 to 2005. She has advocated for the Detroit charter school system and she is a former member of the board of the Foundation for Excellence in Education. She has served as chair of the board of the Alliance for School Choice and the Acton Institute and headed the All Children Matter PAC.
DeVos is married to former Amway CEO Dick DeVos. Her brother, Erik Prince, a former U.S. Navy SEAL officer, is the founder of Blackwater USA. Their father is billionaire industrialist Edgar Prince, founder of the Prince Corporation. In 2016, the family was listed by Forbes as the 88th-richest in America, with an estimated net worth of $5.4 billion.
On November 23, 2016, then-president-elect Donald Trump announced that he would nominate DeVos to serve as Secretary of Education in his administration. On January 31, following strong opposition to the nomination from Democrats, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions approved her nomination on a party-line vote, sending her nomination to the Senate floor. On February 7, 2017, she was confirmed by the Senate by a 51–50 margin, with Vice President Mike Pence breaking the tie in favor of her nomination.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Betsy DeVos” is american politician and philanthropist (born 1958). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Betsy, DeVos and American, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “american politician and philanthropist (born 1958)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4898286. VIAF identifies the subject as 4971150869804922190008. The Library of Congress control number is no2018077645. 1 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1958, 2017, 2021 and 1992.
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This entry incorporates text from “Betsy DeVos” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.