Laura Rockefeller Chasin

Who is Laura Rockefeller Chasin?

Laura Spelman Rockefeller is an American phanthropist. She is the eldest child of Laurance Spelman Rockefeller and Mary French, and a fourth generation member of the Rockefeller family. She has two younger sisters, Marion and Lucy, and a younger brother, Laurance Jr.. Her patrilineal great-grandfather was Standard Oil's co-founder John D. Rockefeller and her matrilineal great-grandfather was Frederick H. Billings, a president of Northern Pacific Railway. Both of her grandmothers, Mary Billings French and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, were founders of YWCA USA.

Raised in New York City, she graduated from the Brearley School in Manhattan and Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut. She received a B.A. magna cum laude in Art History from Bryn Mawr College, an M.A. in Government from Harvard University, and an M.S.W. from Simmons College School of Social Work. She trained in couple and family therapy and psychodrama.

In 1956 she married James H. Case, with whom she had three children and whom she later divorced. In 1971, she married psychiatrist Richard Chasin, who had three children from prior marriages.