Mitt Romney

Willard "Mitt" Romney was seemingly destined to become a politician, the son of George, a former Michigan governor, and Lenore, who made an unsuccessful run for a seat on the U.S. Senate from the state in 1970. Born in 1947, Romney was raised as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. During his senior year of high school, he met his future wife, Ann, who he would marry several years later after the two reconnected when he returned from a period serving as a Mormon missionary in France. After doing undergraduate work at Stanford and BYU, where he transferred to be with Ann, Romney earned a law degree from Harvard in 1975. He then spent nearly two decades in the business world - mainly at management consulting firm Bain & Company and later its spin-off investment firm Bain Capital -- before making his first run for political office in 1994, losing to incumbent Sen. Ted Kennedy for his seat in the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts. Romney returned to Bain, and in 1998 was chosen to run the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. Romney parlayed his Olympic leadership into a successful run in the 2002 Massachusetts gubernatorial election. Romney did not seek re-election in 2006, eventually opting to pursue a presidential campaign in 2008, but he lost the Republican nomination to Arizona Sen. John McCain. He gave politics another shot four years later, this time winning the presidential nomination for the Republican Party. Along with his running mate, then-Rep. Paul Ryan from Wisconsin, Romney lost the election to President Barack Obama. Following his 2012 loss, Romney returned to the private sector to continue his business career and do philanthropic work, sometimes re-entering the political realm to endorse certain candidates running for office. A 2014 documentary, simply titled "Mitt," provided a behind-the-scenes look at both of his unsuccessful presidential campaigns.