Saturday, 20 February 2010

Belle Inspiration: First Lady Michelle Obama

All hail the superwomen of our generation!

  


Michelle Obama epitomises the ultimate achiever in my eyes...

Michelle Obama’s CV is impressive: she was Executive Director for the Chicago office of Public Allies - encouraging young people to work on social issues - she was also the former Vice President for Community and External Affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals. The media are also taking a shine to her. She was listed as one of the World’s Most Inspiring Women by Essence magazine as well as appearing in Vanity Fair’s 10 Of The World’s Best Dressed People.

Michelle was inspired to follow her brother to Princeton University;[3] he graduated in 1983. At Princeton, she challenged the teaching methodology for French because she felt that it should be more conversational.[16] As part of her requirements for graduation, she wrote a thesis entitled, "Princeton Educated Blacks and the Black Community."[17][18] "I remember being shocked," she says, "by college students who drove BMWs. I didn't even know parents who drove BMWs."[14] Robinson majored in sociology and minored in African American studies and graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in 1985.[2][19] She earned her Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from Harvard Law School in 1988.[20] While at Harvard, she participated in political demonstrations advocating the hiring of professors who were members of minorities.[21] She is the third First Lady with a postgraduate degree, following Hillary Rodham Clinton and Laura Bush.[22] In July 2008, Obama accepted the invitation to become an honorary member of the 100-year-old black sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha, which had no active undergraduate chapter at Princeton when she attended.[23]

Following law school, she was an associate at the Chicago office of the law firm Sidley Austin, where she first met her future husband. At the firm, she worked on marketing and intellectual property.[2] Subsequently, she heldpublic sector positions in the Chicago city government as an Assistant to the Mayor, and as Assistant Commissioner of Planning and Development. In 1993, she became Executive Director for the Chicago office of Public Allies, a non-profit organization encouraging young people to work on social issues in nonprofit groups and government agencies.[15] She worked there nearly four years and set fundraising records for the organization that still stood 12 years after she left.[12]
In 1996, she served as the Associate Dean of Student Services at the University of Chicago, where she developed the University's Community Service Center.[39] In 2002, she began working for the University of Chicago Hospitals, first as executive director for community affairs and, beginning May 2005, as Vice President for Community and External Affairs.[40] She continued to hold the University of Chicago Hospitals position during the primary campaign, but cut back to part time in order to spend time with her daughters as well as work for her husband's election;[41] she subsequently took a leave of absence from her job.[42] According to the couple’s 2006income tax return, her salary was $273,618 from the University of Chicago Hospitals, while her husband had a salary of $157,082 from the United States Senate. The total Obama income, however, was $991,296, which included $51,200 she earned as a member of the board of directors of TreeHouse Foods, and investments and royalties from his books.[43]
She served as a salaried board member of TreeHouse Foods, Inc. (NYSETHS),[44] a major Wal-Mart supplier with whom she cut ties immediately after her husband made comments critical of Wal-Mart at an AFL-CIO forum in Trenton, New Jersey, on May 14, 2007.[45] She serves on the board of directors of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.[46]

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow! Such an inspiration! Go Mobama! :D

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