The Japan Art Association has appointed former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as International Advisor to the Praemium Imperiale. Starting in September 2022, she will preside over the U.S. Nomination Committee, recommending candidates for the Praemium Imperiale Awards.
Secretary Clinton will succeed Ambassador Caroline Kennedy, former U.S. Ambassador to Japan, who served as International Advisor from 2018 and stepped down in 2021 prior to her nomination as U.S. Ambassador to Australia.
Secretary Clinton will be the fifth U.S. International Advisor, following the founding advisor, Mr. David Rockefeller, his son, Mr. David Rockefeller Jr., Ambassador William Luers and Ambassador Kennedy.

Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton (Born October 26, 1947)
Born in Chicago, Illinois. After graduating from Wellesley College and attending Yale Law School, she became a lawyer and in 1975 married Mr. Bill Clinton, a graduate school alumnus. She was named one of the 100 most outstanding lawyers in the U.S. After her husband was elected president in 1993, she worked on health care reform as First Lady. She was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2000 and reelected in 2006, and ran for the presidency in 2008, losing to Mr. Barack Obama in Iowa despite being considered a front-runner. She was nominated as presidential candidate at the 2016 Democratic convention and lost to Mr. Donald Trump in the presidential election by an electoral margin, although she won more votes than Mr. Trump.
She won the 39th Grammy Award (1996) for Best Spoken Word Album. In 2021, she co-authored with Canadian mystery novelist Louise Penny the international thriller novel, State of Terror, featuring the newly appointed U.S. Secretary of State. She has written many nonfictions including memoirs, but this is her first novel.

International Advisors
In addition to Secretary Clinton, there are five other International Advisors: Mr. Lamberto Dini (former Italian Prime Minister); Lord Patten of Barnes (Christopher Patten, Chancellor of the University of Oxford); Prof. Klaus-Dieter Lehmann (former President of the Goethe-Institut) and Mr. Jean-Pierre Raffarin (former French Prime Minster). Each International Advisor recommends candidates in five categories and make a press announcement of the recipients in each country. Mr. Shinzo Abe (former Japanese Prime Minister), who passed away on July 8, 2022, had served as International Adviser since September 2021.