[1] Nancy Maginnes was born in Manhattan and raised in White Plains, New York.

Her parents were Agnes (born McKinley) and Albert Bristol Maginnes, a wealthy lawyer and football player.

in history in 1955 from Mount Holyoke College and later took a sabbatical from her Rockefeller research job to study at the Sorbonne in the late 1960s.

[3] Before her marriage, she was a long-time aide to New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, recommended to him in 1964 by Kissinger, then a professor at Harvard, where she was a student.

[4] She later became director of international studies for Rockefeller's Commission on Critical Choices for Americans.