Our Woman of the Week...

Woman of the Week: Michelle Obama
by;ELiza Chute
As always, there is a lot of media attention, especially now considering the milestone that our 44th president represents. That is why our woman of the week this week is our, very own first lady: Michelle Obama. Like president Obama she is from Chicago. She graduated from Princeton University Undergraduate and also, like the president, went to Harvard Law School. However the two met at working in Chicago after graduating from Law School working for the law firm Sidley Austin. She has done a variety of different things, job-wise, but they have mostly been geared towards the social services sector.
She was blessed with great intellect. After she skipped the second grade, she joined the gifted class in sixth grade. In high school, she was on the national honor society and the honor role all four years. Which was clearly enough for her to get into an Ivy League University. She graduated from Princeton cum laude, with a double major in sociology and African-American studies. Having always been an advocate for minorities, she participated in demonstrations that advocated for the hiring of more minority professors. After law school , she worked with the, then, future president. The two were married in 1992, and now have two daughters Sasha (born Natasha) and Malia.
Michelle is really well known as a very well dressed woman, but she does so much more than put great clothes on her back. After Sidley Austin she held many public sector positions in Chicago. A year after she married Barrack she became Executive Director of a non profit that encouraged young adults to get involved in issues, a group called Chicago office for Public Allies. After that she developed the Service Center at the University of Chicago while working as Associate Dean of Student Services. In 2002, she started working for University of Chicago Hospital, which she continued to work for part time while Obama was running. According to wikipedia, “Although Obama has campaigned on her husband's behalf since early in his political career by handshaking and fund-raising, she did not relish the activity at first. When she campaigned during her husband's 2000 run for U.S. House of Representatives, her boss at the University of Chicago asked if there was any single thing about campaigning that she enjoyed; after some thought, she replied visiting so many living rooms had given her some new decorating ideas.” Apparently she had reservations about her husband running for president, but cut a deal in which he would stop smoking. In the campaign she always discussed aspects of race and education from the perspective of a mother.


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