The Obamas

Barack Obama was the 44th president of the United States, elected in November 2008 and holding office for two terms. 

He was born in Hawaiʻi on August 4, 1961, to a mother from Kansas and a father from Kenya, and raised with the help of his grandparents. 

Soon after graduating from Columbia University in New York City, Obama moved to the South Side of Chicago, where he became a community organizer, coordinating with churches to improve housing conditions and set up job-training programs in a community hit hard by steel mill closures. 

After nearly three years, he attended Harvard Law School, where he attracted national attention as the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review. Returning to Chicago, he became a civil rights attorney and married Michelle Robinson in 1992. Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, and then to the United States Senate in 2004. 

When he was elected president in 2008, he became the first African American to hold the office, and was inaugurated during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. In office, he oversaw eight years of progress, taking action to rescue the American economy, grow the middle class, pass the Affordable Care Act, wind down two wars, and refocus American diplomatic leadership around the world. He left office having overseen the longest job stretch of American job creation ever and led the creation of the Paris Agreement, the most ambitious global climate agreement in history.  In 2009, Obama became the fourth president to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

In his post-presidency, President Obama has dedicated his efforts to supporting the next generation of leaders. The Obama Foundation is bringing that vision to life through programs for emerging leaders across continents, and the Foundation’s mission to inspire, empower, and connect people to change their world. That legacy will carry on through the Obama Presidential Center, currently under construction on Chicago’s South Side.

Michelle Robinson Obama served as First Lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017.

Michelle’s journey began on the South Side of Chicago, where Fraser and Marian Robinson instilled in their daughter a heartfelt commitment to family, hard work, and education.

A graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, Michelle returned to Chicago to join the firm of Sidley & Austin, where she met her future husband Barack Obama. She later worked in the Chicago mayor’s office, at the University of Chicago, and at the University of Chicago Medical Center. Mrs. Obama also founded the Chicago chapter of Public Allies, an AmeriCorps program that prepares young people for public service.

As First Lady, Mrs. Obama led initiatives that included Let’s Move!, a program aiming to end childhood obesity, and Reach Higher, which helped students access and train for new job opportunities. 

She championed the education of girls and women around the world, and that work continues today at the Obama Foundation through the Girls Opportunity Alliance. The Alliance supports global grassroots organizations that are working to make sure girls can get the education they deserve.