Donna Edna Shalala ( /ʃəˈleɪlə/ shə-LAY-lə; born February 14, 1941) served for eight years as Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Bill Clinton and has been president of the University of Miami, a private university in Coral Gables, Florida, since 2001. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, by President George W. Bush in June 2008.

Shalala was born in Cleveland, Ohio to Maronite Catholic Lebanese immigrant parents and has a twin sister, Diane Fritel. She graduated from West Tech High School and received her bachelor's degree in 1962 from Western College for Women (which, in 1976, was merged with Miami University in Oxford, Ohio). She is 4'1" tall.

She served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Iran from 1962–64, where she worked with other volunteers to construct an agricultural college.

She received a Master's and then, in 1970, a Doctorate degree from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York.

Janet Wood Reno (born July 21, 1938) is a former Attorney General of the United States (1993–2001). She was nominated by President Bill Clinton on February 11, 1993, and confirmed on March 11. She was the first female Attorney General and the second longest serving Attorney General after William Wirt.

Reno was born in Miami, Florida. Reno's father, Henry Olaf Reno (original surname Rasmussen), emigrated to the United States from Denmark and for forty-three years was a police reporter for the Miami Herald. Jane Wallace (née Wood), Reno's mother, raised her children and then became an investigative reporter for the Miami News. Janet Reno has three younger siblings.

Reno attended public school in Miami-Dade County, Florida, where she was a debating champion and was valedictorian at Coral Gables High School. In 1956, Reno enrolled at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where she majored in chemistry, lived in Balch Hall, became president of the Women's Self-Government Association, and earned her room and board.

Robert Joseph "Bob" Dole (born July 22, 1923) is an American attorney and politician. Dole represented Kansas in the United States Senate from 1969 to 1996, was Gerald Ford's Vice Presidential running mate in the 1976 presidential election, and was Senate Majority Leader from 1985 to 1987 and in 1995 and 1996. Dole was the Republican party nominee in the presidential election of 1996, but he lost to incumbent Democrat Bill Clinton. Dole is currently special counsel at the Washington, D.C. office of law firm Alston & Bird.

In 2007, President George W. Bush appointed Dole as a co-chair of the commission to investigate problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, along with Donna Shalala, a former member of the Clinton cabinet. Dole is married to former U.S. cabinet member and former U.S. Senator Elizabeth Hanford Dole of North Carolina. Bob Dole is currently a member of the advisory council of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

Bob Dole was born in Russell, Kansas, the son of Bina M. (née Talbott; 1904–1983) and Doran Ray Dole (1901–1975). His father, who had moved the family to Russell while Dole was still a toddler, made a living by running a small creamery. Among his father's customers was the father of Arlen Specter who ran a junkyard in the town and used Dole's scales to weigh junk. Specter, who was six years younger than Dole and graduated Russell High School in 1947, was not a Dole contemporary although Specter's brother Morton Specter and Dole's brother Kenny Dole were friends. During the Great Depression, which hit Kansas very hard, the Dole family moved into the basement of their home and rented out the rest of the house. As a boy, he took many odd jobs around Russell, and he would later work as a soda jerk in the local drug store.