Beth Dozoretz does not lack for powerful political connections. Chosen to be director of the Art in Embassies Program in December 2010, she is a longtime Democratic fundraiser with close ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton, who also was the first woman to serve as finance chair of the Democratic National Committee, in 1999. The program provides works of art to be displayed in U.S. embassies around the world.

 

Dozoretz grew up in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her father, Melvin Goldman, was a dentist who specialized in root canal work, a teacher and a part-time inventor. Her mother, Sylvia, was a homemaker. Dozoretz graduated from Doherty High School in 1969 and then completed college at the age of 20 and married her high school sweetheart, Dick Schwartz.

 

She worked as a model and a first-grade teacher before settling into retail clothing sales. She moved up to buyer for a sportswear company and, at the age of 31, she became president of Clyde’s Sportswear. Dozonetz then worked her way up to become president of Casual Corner, a women’s clothier, president of the apparel manufacturing firm, S&T Industries, and in 2000, she joined the board of directors of U.S. Technologies Inc.

 

Meanwhile, she divorced, married an apparels executive and divorced again. She met her third, and current, husband, Ron Dozoretz, the founder of FHC Health Systems, at a political fundraiser in Virginia. His estimated net worth is $250 million. The couple married in September 1990, and Beth became senior vice president of FHC.

 

Dozoretz became politically active after her husband took her to the 1992 Democratic National Convention, where she first connected with the Clintons. In time, the Dozoretzes and Clintons became good friends. The Dozoretzes named their daughter after Melanne Verveer, Hillary Clinton’s former White House chief of staff, and then asked Bill Clinton to be her godfather.

 

In 1994, Dozoretz became head of the DNC’s Major Donor Program and was named vice-chair for both the 1996 Clinton-Gore Campaign and the Presidential Inaugural Committee.

 

During Bill Clinton’s final days in the White House, he pardoned fugitive financier Marc Rich, who had fled to Switzerland in the early 1980s after being convicted of tax evasion and charged with conducting illegal oil deals with Iran during the hostage crisis. Beth Dozoretz was a close friend of Rich’s wife, Denise Rich, who had donated heavily to the Democrats during the Clinton years, including a $450,000 contribution to the presidential library foundation that Dozoretz had solicited. Dozoretz reportedly talked to President Clinton about pardoning Rich and thanked him after doing so. She later was called before Congress to testify about the matter, but refused and invoked her Fifth Amendment rights.

 

Over the past decade, the Dozoretzes have contributed more than $1 million to political candidates.

 

Dozoretz is currently an Advanced Leadership Initiative fellow at Harvard University. She has served on several boards including: Teach for America, V-Day, the Jordan River Foundation (founded by Jordan’s Queen Rania), the Brookings Institute’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, George Washington University's National Council for Political Management, Rabin Medical Center, the Washington D.C. Jewish Community Center and the Center for Public Leadership (vice president of the advisory board) at Harvard University’s Kennedy School. She also served on the executive committee of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC),

 

Dozoretz and her husband have a son and a daughter.

-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky

 

Advanced Leadership Initiative Fellow (Harvard University)

Donor Scorecard: Beth Dozoretz (by Ken Silverstein, Harper’s)

Doyenne of the Dollars (by Viveca Novak, Time)