Secretary of state followed by the rest of the Cabinet. President Barack Obama named Hillary Clinton as his choice for 67th Secretary of State on December 1, 2008. She was confirmed on January 21, 2009, the day after Obama's inauguration and is the third woman to hold the position. On December 21, 2012 President Obama announced his choice for Secretary of State during his second term, Senator John Kerry. His confirmation hearing took place on January 24, 2013, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The committee unanimously voted to approve him on January 29, 2013, and the same day the full Senate confirmed
Hillary Clinton's tenure as Secretary of State administration, with a variety of assessments being produced. A prominent mid-July speech to the Council on Foreign Relations reasserted her role; she said, "We cannot be afraid or unwilling to engage. Our focus on diplomacy and development is not an alternative to our national security arsenal." In July 2009, Clinton announced a new State Department initiative, the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, to establish specific objectives for the State Department's diplomatic missions abroad. The most ambitious of Clinton's departmental reforms, it is modeled after the Defense Department's Quadrennial Defense Review, which Clinton was familiar with from her days on the