Julia V. Taft

Julia Ann Vadala was born on Governors Island in New York Harbor. Her father was Colonel Anthony Vadala, a surgeon in the Army Medical Corps, and her mother was Shirley Harris Vadala. She attended the University of Colorado at Boulder, receiving a bachelor's degree in international politics in 1964, and a master's degree in international politics in 1969. ==Career==

After graduating from the University of Colorado in 1969, Vadala completed a White House Fellowship at the White House. She then became an aide to United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Elliot Richardson. evacuees from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam after the fall of Saigon. Taft would spend the next three decades designing and developing refugee programs for the United States Department of State, the United States Department of Health and Human Services, the United States Agency for International Development, and the United Nations. In 1997, U.S. president Bill Clinton nominated Taft to be Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration, and she subsequently held this office from November 10, 1997, to January 19, 2001. From 2001 to 2004, she was director of the United Nations Development Programme's Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery, in which capacity she oversaw the United Nations response to displaced persons related to the War in Afghanistan. ==Personal life==

Her first marriage, to Fred Malone, ended in divorce. She then married lawyer William Howard Taft IV, great-grandson of U.S. president William H. Taft, in 1974. Together, the couple had: • William Howard Taft V • Maria Taft • Julia Taft Taft died of colon cancer at her Washington, D.C. home. ==References==