Hillary Clinton, embarking on a new run for the presidency, is not the only first lady determined to step out of her husband’s formidable shadow. Consider Michelle Obama, who spent 20 years building a strong professional identity, then entered the national spotlight and was forced to start over.
Long before Barack Obama was the president of the United States, and long before her most public claim to fame was president’s wife, the current first lady was an independent player in Chicago. She adopted challenging issues at the intersection of race and community, and she became accustomed to taking flak.
In 2001, when the University of Chicago brass gathered to break ground for a $135 million children’s hospital, the voice of a protester with a bullhorn broke through the crisp morning air. Obama, the new director of community outreach for the university medical center, went over to talk with him.
The man’s name was Omar Shareef. His beef was that the university was not giving enough business to African American construction workers. Obama set up a meeting with university administrators. After the session, the Rev. Gregory Daniels complained that the demonstrators were being fobbed off on officials “who have jobs to protect or do not have the best interest of blacks at heart.”
Daniels demanded that Obama be removed, claiming that she was in cahoots with white university leaders to divide the black community. Obama persisted. Within a month, the university pledged to deliver business to qualified minority-run companies and Shareef promised to end the protests.
Obama followed through. At a later meeting, she spoke firmly with the white owner of a large construction firm who thought he could nod agreeably and ignore the hiring requirements. The owner got no more business until he met her demands, said Kenneth P. Kates, the hospital’s chief operating officer, who described her as “tenacious.”
Michelle’s graduation picture from Princeton University. Courtesy of Obama for America
“Tenacious” is also the word chosen by Charles Ogletree, Obama’s Harvard Law School professor and mentor, to describe her style of legal advocacy. As associates and staff quickly learned, in Michelle Obama’s shop, there would be no trifling.
Obama is hardly a mere appendage to her supremely accomplished husband, the leader of the free world, but six years into their White House tenure, it is easy to forget her previous career, which is little known and less understood.
After a three-year stint at Sidley & Austin, a white-shoe law firm that specialized in corporate work, Obama pursued jobs that held meaning for her, the self-described “regular little black girl from the South Side of Chicago.” Her path took her through City Hall to Public Allies, a leadership training and mentoring program, and on to the University of Chicago, where she spent a dozen years.
Obama built the Chicago office of Public Allies from scratch, mentoring a diverse array of 30 to 40 young people each year and guiding them into internships at government agencies and nonprofits. Within two years, she oversaw an annual budget of $1.1 million. It was “the first thing that was mine and I was responsible for every aspect of it.”
“I was never happier in my life,” she said soon after reaching the White House, “than when I was working to build Public Allies.”
Julie Sullivan, who worked alongside her, was impressed with Obama’s ability to be “understood anywhere” as she crossed back and forth among Chicago’s disparate realms. She recalled drives across town in Michelle’s Saab: “We’d go from some burned out shithole on the West Side, where she’s talking to really scary people, and then we’d go downtown to a meeting” with the chief of staff to Mayor Richard M. Daley.
“She was unafraid to put issues on the table and talk about them clearly,” Sullivan remembered. “She always had a really, really uncanny combination of unruffled calm and extreme clarity about what needed to happen next, whether it was in the small picture or the big picture.”
When issues of race and class surfaced in Public Allies staff discussions and training sessions, as they always did, Obama had little tolerance for dogma or endless debate. Getting from Point A to Point B was her focus, an approach that would become a hallmark of her professional and political life.
Paul Schmitz, who ran the organization’s Milwaukee office, said Obama was the person who would say during a conversation, “That’s nice, but we’ve got to get things done.”
A particular focus of Obama’s Chicago work was community development, an interest she cultivated at City Hall, where she was hired in 1991, at age 27, by future White House counselor and friend Valerie Jarrett. Michelle was skeptical of the approach of many outsiders and government workers, however well intentioned, whose style was not to consult, but to pronounce.
She refined her thinking with the help of a neighborhood organizing approach known Asset-Based Community Development, or ABCD. It was developed by Northwestern University professor John McKnight, who had written a law school reference letter for Barack Obama, and his colleague Jody Kretzmann.
As McKnight and Kretzmann saw it, do-gooders often failed to appreciate the abilities of people they were trying to help and too rarely drew on them for solutions. To be effective, solutions needed to be crafted from the inside out and the ground up. A key goal was self-reliance. Only if the project were practical and made sense to the residents would it be sustainable. And only if it were sustainable would it make the neighborhood stronger.
To be a success, the thinking went, outsiders would recognize a suffering neighborhood and its needs as a glass half empty, but work with it as a glass half full. They would see deficits, of course, but also assets.
Obama introduced members of Public Allies to the ABCD approach and she carried the outlook to her work at the University of Chicago, where she spent five years developing student community service projects before moving to the outreach job at the medical center.
For senior hospital staff and trustees, she organized volunteer days, as well as field trips to grittier parts of the city. At an appointed intersection, she would ask the driver to stop the bus and her guests would get out. In one direction, they would see a street of broken down and boarded up houses. Then they would turn and see a block of renovated homes with sparkling windows and fresh paint. Assets, in other words, not just deficits.
Michelle Obama as a child with her brother Craig Robinson. Courtesy of Obama for America
Obama grew up in a one-bedroom apartment that was within walking distance of the campus stocked with Nobel prize winners and thinkers of great renown. But she described it as an institution that had turned its back on African American children like her, and she said she had never set foot there.
Yet the university was trying to change, she said in 2005, and “somebody like me, who has feet in both worlds, can help to bridge the gap.” During her tenure, Obama pushed for greater diversity in medical center hiring, and, according to university records, she helped channel nearly $50 million in construction work to firms owned by women or minorities.
To make the gears turn smoothly at a time in her life when she recalled “making the endless to-do lists that I never got through and often lost,” Obama set a standard of efficiency at the medical center that would become familiar to aides throughout the years.
When, for example, her hospital outreach team proposed a community meeting on a Saturday, cutting into family time, Michelle wanted evidence that the purpose was clear, the scheduling was essential, and the meeting would run on time. “It was never willy-nilly or just to meet,” said Leif Elsmo, her longtime deputy.
Colleagues in Chicago and the White House describe Obama as disciplined and inclined to over-prepare. While an aide can hand Barack Obama a new speech just minutes before the president is due to speak, Michelle Obama expects drafts well ahead of time. For smaller events, she studies briefing books, thumbnail biographies and photographs of the guests so that she will have something relevant to say.
Obama’s former White House policy director, Jocelyn Frye, described an imperative to move the needle, as the staff liked to say, to make sure her evolving agenda contained substance, not fluff, as the invitations and opportunities piled up. The first lady told her staff, “Don’t just put me on a plane, send me someplace and have me smile.”
Obama will be only 53 years old when she moves out of the White House on January 20, 2017. Unlike Hillary Clinton, her ambitions do not run to electoral politics. As Barack Obama said, she would first have to be abducted by aliens. She plans to do some writing and continue her focus on education, which she calls “the single most important civil rights issue that we face today.”
She is making it clear that she is not done yet.
Peter Slevin’s new book is “Michelle Obama: A Life,” published this month by Alfred A. Knopf. He spent 10 years on the Washington Post national staff and now is an associate professor at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
One of the reason I admire Michelle, is her dedication she have for her husband, and put her own needs aside, She is as Educated and Brilliant maybe even more so than The President. Her children seem to inherit the parents healthy attitude for knowledge.As we all know the mother is the heart of the home.she by far the best First Lady of my time.
Everyday I surf the internet just to get the latest on Michelle Obama and her family. I am a black woman and I love you very much. May the spirit of God dwell in you and you gain victory over all your enemies those present and those to come.
Amen! She’s always in my prayers too. She’s my hero..
Wow, what a throng of worshippers. She is nothing less than a messiah from what I read hear. When, in actuality she has expressed her hatred of America time and time again. I do not get how people can be so mislead. She came out the same corrupt Chicago political system barack did. Community organizer? That is code for liberal crony.
The bushes did not take more vacations, when they took vacations, it was usually to their home in crawford texas. Blind biased liberal piggies.
MAYBE SHE’LL REMEMBER YOU WHEN SHE COMES INTO HER KINGDOM.
Confession: I’m one of those women who’s suspicious of and really don’t like women in general, and for good reason. I disagree that that makes me the problem by the way. Women can be envious, catty, scheming, and much worse, but with the advent of social media and a blurring of gender lines, everyone’s guilty of the same and worse these days.
Michelle Obama is one of very few women (or people) I like and respect. I like her a whole lot actually. I think she’s grand. She piqued my interest years ago as she campaigned for her husband, and she’s held my attention ever since. For while she is in my opinion, the most genuine, compelling and principled public figure in the world today, she isn’t self-righteous, conniving, artificial or dull. She is the most intriguing actually, because as fun and open as she’s been, she’s undoubtedly a very serious person with so much depth and many impressive facets to her. She takes it all in stride; A take it or leave it kinda woman. You never get the sense that she’s trying to manipulate you, or looking for your approval or validation.
She’s impressed me so with her dignity, courage, strength, grace and warmth, even as she’s endured the worst assault ever visited upon any First Lady. The attacks on her have been horrid and blatant in its outright racist and misogynistic tones. These hostile attacks coming from those envious and scared of her and her many great gifts. They fear her, her power and her massive potential, so they work hard to disparage and slander her so as to preemptively discredit her. But hers continues to be an even better story than a phoenix rising from the ashes.
I join the many excited to see Michelle Obama’s greatness and desperately needed sensible influence unfold to its vast capacity. A perfect blend of the best of modern and traditional, with a massive dollop of integrity for good measure, Michelle Obama is exactly what the world needs.
For all of Michelle Obama’s sacrifices on behalf of her husband and his drawn out political career: the best years of her life, her own expensive double ivy league education, shelving her own dreams and aspirations -personally and professionally- to support him in his, I don’t see that her husband has been nearly as generous in investing in her as he could and should have. For too long Barack Obama has been far too self-involved, self-indulgent, self-serving and self-aggrandizing, and certainly hasn’t protected or looked out for his own wife. Not in the least, or nearly as well as he could and should have. Plain for all to see.
Which makes all of President Obama’s overtures and glib speeches on equality for women and investing in and supporting women at home and in the workplace, ring terribly hollow. Which might explain why he strangely invokes his daughters and not his wife, when he gives his equality and fairness for women speeches. Charity ought to begin at home, and there’s nothing more contradictory and cynical than a president who purports to support women, and even publicly props up other women, all while being instrumental in shrinking, actively diminishing & professionally trivializing his own super-smart wife. He plays faux hero who elevates others, and touts professional women, yet he’s rather callously kept his own Princeton and Harvard educated wife professionally dumbed down and stunted for years, as he’s very selfishly prioritized and still solely prioritizes himself, in furtherance of his career and himself. So much for all his talk about valuing, supporting and investing in women!
It appears that everyone in Barack Obama’s orbit, his wife included, exists primarily to boost and ennoble him. Sadly his wife, her professional career and her overall well-being has been the greatest casualty of that rather tilted set-up.
Now that Barack Obama has reached the pinnacle of that political career that has previously taken precedence over everything else, it’ll be interesting to see if and how he now prioritizes, supports and dedicatedly lifts up his own long-suffering wife who he’s seriously short-changed through the years. His track record so far in that regard has been abysmal. Perhaps he’ll set aside his self-obsession and do right by his wife Michelle finally? We’ll see. We’ll be watching.
Donna,
I so agree with on the person of first lady and the artful way in which you describe her, I also Love Obama, but I agree his wife maybe very intimidating to him, He’s always complimentary of her as a wife and mother, in her looks and even how she retained looks at 50. But as for for accomplishments and the fact that she is also a brilliant lawyer. Her speeches can bring tears to your eyes as she grips you. I hope she go into politics after they leave the whitehouse
I’m sorry, but what a crock. It’s insulting and incredibly misogynistic to assume this accomplished woman made none of her own choices and allowed herself to be “dumbed down” and “stunted” by her husband. I mean, really? You may hold that dim view of her, even though clearly you don’t know anything about what motivates her. I don’t know what motivates her either – but what I see is completely different…a woman who chose around path, and made her own choices around her professional career, her family, and the causes she chose to dedicate herself to. And she has nothing to prove or apologize for. Furthermore, I’d bet my bottom dollar that whatever she wanted to pursue in life she’d pursue and her husband would support her strongly.
she inspires me a lot that Michelle Obama. What a wonderful lady she is down to earth
Oh my model how i wish i was you younger sister. Though not your sibling yet no one will go scoot free if he or she deers to talk ill of you. I love everything about you and will strive to emulate you especially in trying to make my husband an outstanding figure and being a good wife for him for others to also imitate me so that from you at the top we can change this world which is fast becoming unbecoming.
Cool!!
I am so proud of Mrs Obama. These days I am reading a book “Obama From promise To Power” by David Mendell to spend some spare time. I liked the book and knew a lot about Obama’s candidacy, and his family, got an overall idea about America. I have never been in America, but studied in Australia for 4 years as international student, spending 120000$. Now I regret studying in Australia, as many countries including Europe requires US GAAP, not an australian accounting, the Australian CPA. Now I realise that I can not find a job in Mongolia, and the knowledge I acquired in Australia is a dog’s shit here and I forgot a lot about Mongolian accounting and it has changed a lot since 2008. I wanna to adivse people that it is much much better to study in the USA than any other country as it will help you get a job anywhere on the world. No Australia. Mrs Obama is an inspiration for many around the world and I wish her the happiest life and family for the rest of her life. A nice lovely lady. If you weren’t, the god would not allow you to be the most powerful first lady.
I’m happy mrs to see your voice . I know God show me sincerely you and your husband on my way that’s right I never regret my 2 vote and I continually to . Thank you and God bless you all.
I love Michelle, she is a strong black woman. A powerful role model for not just women but us all. Keep on going, we are praying for you and your beautiful family all the time. Our Lord will keep on protecting you, your children and our president. For every strong and successful man, a strong woman is right behind. And you are that woman. Good job!
I admire Michelle. Look what she has accomplished thus far from her very humble beginnings. There will always be haters. So what. I hope after her life in the White House, we will see more of her in an area that she is passionate about. If Michelle chooses a life of Public Service, private business or just a wife and mother, I support Michelle 100%.
I hope one day, I’ll get the opportunity to dedicate a song to her, and the president, and tell them a job well done. I am so proud to be an American!
This BEAUTIFUL ANGEL (Michelle) has Proverbs 31 written ALL over her!! What an honor it is for her to represent the USA with such class, integrity and the fear of the Lord. Continue to roll with everything you have Michelle!! Praying for you and your family. :)
everything has been said already—she is such a powerful role model for women today—I feel empowered by her life–can’t wait to feel the message of the remainder of her life–I thank God for her–a much needed visionary in these trying times
An epitome of who a wife, mother , sister, friend, neighbor, child of God should be.
Michelle I am so taken by your strength,committment and dedication to fight for equality and justice for our black communities. Michelle as a black woman you are the strength for other women who has not yet recognize they to have that same tenacious power within to go out into the world and make a positive difference for the less fortunate.
Huge!
she did better….big up to her
life is a riddle.
Michelle is a real African woman. Caring, loving, passionate, hardworking, intelligent, God fearing and altruistic.
I don’t think she loves her husband. From the first she’s given him a contemptuous look as if she knew something disgusting about him. It’s a scornful look. Her daughters gave him similar looks at Thanksgiving turkey-pardoning time. That is not a happy family.
Spot on DIDI. I too have no idea how Mrs Obama does it, but I’m in awe of her. I wouldn’t tolerate any of the rubbish she’s had to deal with all these years so her husband can indulge his need for political relevance. I think Barack Obama is a classic narcissist, but one who’s perfected his act. I often find myself feeling sorry for Mrs Obama these days. In the earlier days he played up the doting husband to great effect and caused many a woman to wish for husbands just like him. But once he had his 2nd term in the bag and his staff who all think they each hold lover status and his wife doesn’t count, falling all over themselves telling him how great he is – because that’s what he likes to hear, and certain women coddling and fawning over him, he became insufferable and such a self-absorbed you know what. How does she put up with that massive glass ego of his and his constant need for fawning and narcissistic supply? How does any woman contain the runaway ego of the husband spoiled by fame, power and fawning outsiders? How does she deal with outsiders trying to elbow her out to gain access and get closer to her husband? And him enjoying all the jostling for his attention, but all at her expense? How does she put up with people who coddle her husband but treat her as if she were a villain and he, a weak child victim needing protection? He does that manipulative stuff so well, he’s a real master, it’s something watching him get over people. She’s a better woman than I’ll ever be. She deserves a trophy. And an honorable husband who actually looks out for her, appreciates and respects her, and isn’t too busy manipulating others with his contrived chivalry, and playing faux hero to outsiders while completely forgetting and neglecting his own wife.
@Virginia Benson, you’re projecting your own miserable existence on Michelle Obama and her family.
Michelle Obama, a very proud and private woman, has sacrificed everything for her husband. No wife sacrifices as much as she has sacrificed if she didn’t love her husband. She has sacrificed too much – and continues to, just to keep her husband happy.
She’s become a target for his enemies and even some of his obsessed supporters and fans alike who romanticize him and resent her for being his wife and the mother of their beautiful daughters. Never mind that most conveniently overlook what she’s had to sacrifice and what she’s endured and continues to endure, as his wife – And the hard truth that as attractive as he suddenly looks against the backdrop of Air Force One, and while being feted on the world stage, she and she alone, knows the real him. The man who had nothing when she met and married him, and who certainly has as many bad habits as any other selfish and sometimes annoying and irritating husband out there.
She was the top earner, and sole breadwinner for a long time in their marriage. Though she’s 3 years younger than him, she graduated from Harvard BEFORE he even got into Harvard, and she was recruited by the top law firm in Chicago straight out of law school. She was practicing law BEFORE he even went to Harvard.
She gave up her own dreams and aspirations so that her husband could pursue his. She set aside her own ambitions especially because she admirably prioritized her two daughters and wanted them to have one fully present parent at all times since her husband, their father, was always away chasing his political ambitions.
She lost her earning power and many years of assured professional advancement guaranteed by her double Ivy league degrees, her privacy, and the many emotional, physical and psychological needs every wife has, and so much more, in reluctantly agreeing to support her husband’s political career.
Her life, her marriage, her husband, her family has been invaded and hijacked by complete strangers including by people like yourself who scrutinize her every smile and non-smile. She’s been maligned and dehumanized in the most personal and malicious ways. A lesser woman would have crumbled and lost their mind by now.
Opportunists, mercenaries and enablers alike have insinuated themselves into her husband’s life and inner circle – and by extension into hers. They leech onto and hijack her husband under the guise of political support, but they only seek out access for their own selfish purposes and ulterior motives. These dubious persons and operatives lurking around in her husband’s life have wreaked havoc on her family life I’m sure, and like any wife, she certainly can’t be happy about it.
All this woman ever really wanted was a happy, strong, loving, thriving marriage and raising a happy, strong, loving, thriving family together with the man she loves. Armed with her Princeton and Harvard degrees and her professional focus and drive, she was always going to be financially set.
Often in response to questions that ask her what she hopes for, Michelle Obama has always said that she just wants her family to come out at the end of this experience, whole and intact. That my friend is not the sentiment of a woman who doesn’t love her husband. That is the prayer of a loyal, loving and fully committed wife, a woman who loves hard and was willing to sacrifice, set aside her now prophetic reservations about politics, and step out of her comfort zone, albeit with some well-founded trepidation to support the husband she very much believed in and passionately loves.
I know I wouldn’t and couldn’t ever put up with or go through what she has had to for her husband, and I love my husband very, very much.
I’m obsessed with Mrs Obama! She’s my hero. A rare woman who’s uniquely herself and in the most beautiful and uncontrived way. I greatly admire her. Her strength, her intelligence, her zest for life, her honesty, her warmth, her integrity, her wisdom, her well-rounded and healthy attitude to life. She’s strong yet vulnerable. She’s humble, yet confident and brimming with a well-earned sense of pride. But what I love and admire most about her, is how she prioritizes her family. She’s one of the few public figures who’s able to embrace the public, but leaves you without any doubt about what’s most important to her: her 2 daughters and her husband. Her fierce and unyielding love for them is palpable. I love that she’s straightforward and doesn’t play games.
I love the way you know that she’ll do anything for her 2 daughters even if meant depriving herself. I love the way she passionately loves her husband. How fiercely loyal and protective she is of him. I love how she passionately vouches for him something so powerful, that she ends up making him look that more attractive.
And even though she exudes such strength, she completely melts at her husband’s touch and is at once confident and vulnerable with and around him. I just love her.
Mrs Obama should be studied and emulated. She has it right.
Ms. Obama’s picture with her brother Craig truly defines that people do not change. Ms. Obama still has that serious, investigative determined look today. The picture is adorable. She is a born leader.b
Articles like this tend to produce and exploit and even expand the positive aspects of Michelle’s life and she is a strong Black Woman with strong convictions but the fact is..we did not vote for her and she has over stepped, used and abused her position in our White House, including and especially, her vacations that included family, friends and staff. To me that shows another darker side to Michelle. I do not believe she should have ever had anything to do with our children or school lunches! And she is definitely using her position to serve her own agenda as Hussein Obama has done. She beautiful, fun and even brilliant but she gets a D- as our First Lady but that is the good news..Obama gets an F so she is one up on her husband.
Really? First of all the Bushes took even MORE vacations than the Obama’s have. The only reason we didn’t hear too much about when Laura bush and the girls went out is because nobody cared. Pushing for healthier school lunches is a good thing. Remember, its up to the school district to enforce said policy. They can choose whatever lunch scheme they want, as long as it confirms to national standards. In my district, my kids school lunches have improved. The principal even sat down with us (the PTA) and explained what changes would be made, and gave us a tour of the kitchen. As per how you feel about President Obama, that’s another story.
the majority of the Bush vacations were to their own ranch not to expensive places all over the world, flying the family pets, taking different planes, taking nannies, mothers in law, etc. etc. Compare the expenses….if they were available to the public, I think you’d see a BIG difference in the cost of the Obamas down time compared to the Bush family down time. You don’t golf on every exclusive golf course in the world free….Obama didn’t pay for it, you and I did.
FLOTUS is a wonderful inspiration as a wife a mother and accomplished woman
Why did she “voluntarily” give up her license to practice law? And so did BO. Why isn’t that in the article???
You are so ignorant. She didn’t voluntarily give up her license. Her law license is inactive because she wasn’t a practicing attorney. There is a difference in voluntary surrender and voluntarily requesting her license be inactive. The same can be said about licensed brokers and real estate sales. They either or active or inactive and not because of a crime.
Michelle Obama is my hero and I can’t wait to see what she does next, I know it will be big!!!
I was fortunate to be in get presence at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 2013. Her energy is so positive, powerful and palpable. My heart skipped a beat or two when I saw her!! There are no words to describe how I admire our First Lady. We did not meet at that time, I just saw her and I hope to see again in my lifetime and give a
her a hug. She is so SPECIAL. I TRUELY LOVE HER!
Egidia from Boston.
Is this before she was disbarred for insurance fraud pretty much after she received her law degree?
Check snopes.com for the truth. Haters continue to hate…and lie.