Jocelyn F. Benson is an American politician, jurist, and former academic administrator. She is the 43rd Secretary of State of Michigan. She was born on October 22, 1977. Benson is a former dean of Wayne State University Law School, a co-founder of the Military Spouses of Michigan, and a board member of the Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality.
She is the author of State Secretaries of State: Guardians of the Democratic Process (2010). On November 6, 2018, Benson was elected as Michigan’s Secretary of State, becoming the first Democrat to hold the office since Richard H. Austin left office in 1995. She is married to Ryan Friedrichs. Together they have a two-year-old son, Aiden.
Where did Jocelyn Benson go to college?
Benson graduated magna cum laude from Wellesley College, where she founded the now-annual Women in American Political Activism conference and was the first student to be elected to serve in the governing body for the town of Wellesley, Massachusetts.
She subsequently earned her master’s in sociology as a Marshall Scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford, in the United Kingdom, conducting research into the sociological implications of white supremacy and neo-Nazism.
Benson received her JD from Harvard Law School, where she was a general editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review