Kristin Bernhardt Cooper (born July 19, 1956) is an American lawyer who has been First Lady of the state of North Carolina since January 1, 2017.
Raised in Oklahoma City, Cooper moved to North Carolina to earn a Juris Doctor from Campbell Law School in 1982. After working as a staff attorney with the North Carolina General Assembly, she married Democratic Party politician Roy Cooper. Since 2003, she has worked professionally as a guardian ad litem for foster children.
Roy Cooper was elected governor of North Carolina in 2016. Kristin Cooper, as the North Carolina First Lady, expanded the scope of her role and has focused on issues such as child poverty, hunger, literacy, and abuse, as well as the arts.
Early life and education
Cooper was born on July 19, 1956, to Geri Bernhardt, an artist, and Captain Samuel C. Bernhardt, a physician and Vietnam veteran who served with the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Vietnam War. She grew up with three younger sisters in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and attended public schools.
She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Oklahoma. After moving to North Carolina, she graduated with a Juris Doctor from Campbell University's Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law in 1982. She later said that law school represented the only possible educational path, besides becoming a professor, that combined her multipotential interests in reading, writing, and history.
Legal career
Cooper worked as a staff attorney with the Oklahoma Legislature and the North Carolina General Assembly. She was a member of North Carolina's committee on inaugural ceremonies and, in 1997, attended the swearing-in as North Carolina Secretary of State of Campbell Law School classmate Elaine Marshall, who had become the first woman in North Carolina elected to statewide office. Two decades later, Cooper called Marshall her "favorite woman leader" and said that the "freezing January morning" inauguration was "very affecting".
Beginning in 2003, Cooper worked as a guardian ad litem representing foster children in Wake County, North Carolina. Cooper has said that neglect is the reason that children enter the foster system; furthermore, she said, neglect is often due to poverty, and poverty from illiteracy. She also said that children should be well-nourished when they go to school. As first lady, at an event on child hunger, she later said: "A problem I encountered with foster children is that the subsidy they receive simply doesn't allow them to buy enough food to eat. We would have to partner with local organizations and food pantries." Discussing children's well-being, she said: "So many of these issues are easier to address—and change is easier to implement—when they are young children rather than waiting until later."
Family and personal life
In a committee meeting about salvage titles at the North Carolina General Assembly, where she was practicing law, Kristin Bernhardt met Roy Asberry Cooper III (b. 1957), an attorney and state legislator. They later married and raised three children, Hilary, Claire, and Natalie, in Rocky Mount, Nash County. All three daughters graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Roy Cooper was first elected as a state representative and then was appointed to the state senate, where he eventually became the Democratic majority leader. From 2001 to 2017, he was North Carolina Attorney General. To live closer to the attorney general's office, the Cooper family moved to Raleigh, the state capital, after Hilary graduated from high school.
When they were living in Rocky Mount, Kristin Cooper and her three daughters had starred in a production of the musical Camelot; in Raleigh, she and Claire had lead roles in the plays The Diary of Anne Frank and The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. Cooper "has also wielded a paintbrush, a chainsaw, and a snow cone machine all in the name of art", and attended weekly drama lessons at Raleigh Little Theatre (RLT)—another trainee there described her "a witty gal" who "could laugh at herself, genuinely compliment others and self-deprecate with the best". Cooper served two years on the board of the North Carolina Arts Council, which provides grants across the state. In 2017, she entered her second year on the RLT board, and she was previously on the board of the North Raleigh Arts and Creative Theater (NRATC). As first lady, Cooper moderated a panel discussion with female Wake County youth leaders after RLT's premiere of Grace for President in October 2017.
