The first woman governor of Vermont was Madeleine Kunin (nee May; born 1933). As a three-term Democratic governor (1985-1991), her major concerns were fiscal responsibility, education, and the environment.

Madeleine (May) Kunin was born September 28, 1933, in Zurich, Switzerland, the second child of Ferdinand May, a German-Jewish shoe importer, and Renee Bloch May. Pressed for money following the death of her husband in 1936 and fearing the growing Nazi threat to European Jews, Renee May left Switzerland in 1940 with her two children to join relatives living in the Forest Hills neighborhood of New York City. To support her family, May held jobs as a seamstress, a French tutor, and a baby-sitter. The Mays eventually moved to Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Working as a waitress to pay her expenses, Madeleine attended the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, graduating in 1956 with honors in history. She then took the M.S. degree in journalism at Columbia...