Michelle Obama

At 60 years old, Michelle Obama has this physical status:

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson (born January 17, 1964) is an American lawyer, university administrator, and writer who was the first lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017.

She is married to the United States' 44th president, Barack Obama, and was the first African-American first lady. Obama is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School and was raised on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois.

She began her legal work at Sidley Austin, where she met Barack Obama.

She worked in non-profits and as the assistant dean of Student Services at the University of Chicago, as well as vice president George O'Franks of the University of Chicago Medical Center's Community and External Affairs.

Michelle married Barack Obama in 1992, and they have two children. During 2007 and 2008, Obama campaigned for her husband's presidential campaign, giving a keynote address at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

She returned to speak for him at the 2012 Democratic National Convention.

She gave a speech in favor of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, at the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. She was a former first lady. As the first lady, Michelle Obama served as a role model for women and served as an advocate for poverty reduction, education, diet, physical fitness, and healthy eating.

She adored American designers and was dubbed a fashion icon.

Family and education

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson was born in Chicago, Illinois, on January 17, 1964, as a city water plant employee and Democratic precinct captain, and Marian Shields Robinson (b. July 30, 1937), a secretary at Spiegel's catalog store. Michelle was a full time homemaker before she began attending high school.

Both the Robinson and Shields families traces their roots to African Americans in the American South during the Civil War. She descended from the Gullah people of South Carolina's Low Country area, on her father's side. Jim Robinson, her paternal great-grandfather, was born into slavery in 1850 on Friendfield Plantation near Georgetown, South Carolina. After the war, he became a freedman at the age of 15. Some of Obama's paternal relatives still live in the Georgetown area. Fraser Robinson, Jr., her grandfather, built his own home in South Carolina. Since retiring, he and his wife LaVaughn (née Johnson) returned to the Low Country from Chicago.

Melvinia Dosey Shields, a great-great-grandmother, was born into slavery in South Carolina but sold to Henry Walls Shields, who owned a 200-acre farm near Atlanta, Georgia. Adolphus T. Shields, Melvinia's first son, was biracial and born into slavery around 1860. Based on DNA and other information, the father was definite 20-year-old Charles Marion Shields, the son of Melvinia's master. They may have had a long relationship, as she had two more mixed-race children and lived near Shields after emancipation, taking his surname (she later changed her surname).

Melvinia did not want to talk to relatives about Dolphus's father, as was often the case. After the Civil War, Dolphus Shields and his wife Alice moved to Birmingham, Alabama. They were Michelle Robinson's great-grandparents, whose grandparents had moved to Chicago. In the twentieth century, some of their children's lines immigrated to Cleveland, Ohio.

Both four of Robinson's grandparents had multiracial ancestors, reflecting the U.S.'s diverse past. People did not talk about slavery as children were growing up, according to her extended family. Her ancestry includes roots in Ireland, England, and Native American roots. Rabbi Capers Funnye, a native of Georgetown, South Carolina, is one of her new extended family. Funnye is the son of her grandfather Robinson's sister and her husband, and he is about 12 years older than Michelle. Funnye converted to Judaism after college. He is a paternal first cousin who was relocating.

Robinson's childhood home was on the first floor of 7436 South Euclid Avenue in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood, which her parents rented from her great-aunt, who had the first floor. She was raised in what she describes as a "conventional" household, with "the mother at home, the father at work, and dinner is served around the table." Her elementary school was located on the street. She and her family enjoyed playing Monopoly, reading, and visiting extended families on both directions. She played piano, learning from her great-aunt, who was a piano tutor. The Robinsons attended services at a nearby South Shore United Methodist Church. In White Cloud, Michigan, the couple used to holiday in a rustic cabin. Craig, her 21-month-older brother, missed the second grade.

Multiple sclerosis disease in her father had a major effect on her. She was determined to remain out of danger and do well in school, and she did a good job. Michelle began a gifted class at Bryn Mawr Elementary School by the sixth grade (later renamed Bouchet Academy). She attended Whitney Young High School, Chicago's first magnet high school, where she was a classmate of Jesse Jackson's daughter Santita. The round-trip ride from the Robinsons' South Side home to the Near West Side, where the school was located, took three hours. Michelle feared being concerned with how others would perceive her, but she dismissed any negativity surrounding her and instead used it to "fuel me" to keep me going." She recalled that gender discrimination was on the rise, saying, for example, that rather than asking her for her opinion on a given topic, people more often asked what her older brother thought about. She was on the honor roll for four years, took advanced placement classes, and served as the National Honor Society treasurer. She graduated in 1981 as the salutatorian of her class.

Robinson was inspired by her brother's admission to Princeton University, which she attended in 1981. She dabbled in sociology and minored in African-American studies, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1985 after completing a 99-page senior thesis titled "Princeton Educated Blacks and the Black Community" under Walter Wallace's supervision.

Robinson recalls that some of her teachers in high school threatened to discourage her from applying and that she had been warned against "setting my sights too high." She was convinced that her brother was a shamenism before being hired as a basketball coach at Oregon State University and Brown University, so she may have aided her with the recruitment process, but she was determined to show her own worth. She has described herself as overwhelmed during her first year, blaming the fact that neither of her parents graduated from college and that she had never spent time on a college campus.

According to reports, a white roommate's mother pleaded for her daughter's resignation due to Michelle's ethnicity. Robinson said she was at Princeton for the first time she became more aware of her ethnicity, and that, despite her classmates and teachers' willingness to reach out to her, she still felt "like a visitor on campus." There were also questions of economic status. "I remember being shocked," she says, "by college students who drove BMWs." "I didn't even know parents who drove BMWs."

Robinson became involved with the Third World Center while attending Princeton (now known as the Carl A.) Fields Center), an academic and cultural group that has endorsed minority students. She ran their daycare center, which also provided after-school tutoring for older children. She sluggishly challenged the French teaching method because she felt that it should be more conversational. She wrote a sociology thesis titled Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community as part of her graduate school requirements. She conducted her dissertation by sending a questionnaire to African-American graduates, asking that they specify when and how well they were with their race prior to their enrollment at Princeton, how they felt about it as a student, and then as a student. There are fewer than 90 percent of the 400 alumni to whom she sent the questionnaire. Although the black alumni had attended an elite university and had the privileges that accrue to its graduates, their findings did not support her belief that the black alumni would still identify with the African-American community.

Robinson completed her Juris Doctorate, earning her Juris Doctor degree (J.D.) In 1988, Harvard Law School conferred a bachelor's degree. "British law has heightened her excitement by the time she applied for Harvard Law," biographer Bond said. "There was no doubt in her mind that she had earned her position this time around." Charles Ogletree, Harvard's faculty mentor, had answered the question that had plagued her throughout Princeton: whether she should remain the product of her parents or keep the name she had acquired at Princeton; she had come to the conclusion she could be "both brilliant and black."

Robinson was among protesters at Harvard University who were protesting the appointment of professors from minority groups. She worked for the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, assisting low-income households with housing problems. After her two immediate predecessors, Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush, she is the third first lady with a postgraduate degree. She later said that her education opened her doors that she never imagined.

Marian Robinson, Michelle Robinson's mother, was a stay-at-home mother. Fraser C. Robinson III, a student at the University of On the streets of Boston, was her father. Fraser, Robinson's father, died as a result of his illness in March 1991. She would later claim that although he was the "hole in my heart" and "loss in my scar," her father's memory has encouraged her every day. Suzanne Alele, her friend, died of cancer around this time as well. These losses made her think about her contributions to society and how well she was influencing the world from her law practice in her first job after law school. This was a turning point for her.

Robinson met Barack Obama while working with Sidley Austin LLP, one of the few African Americans at the firm, although some have reported other departments). As he was a summer associate, she was supposed to mentor him. Their relationship began with a company lunch and later a community association meeting, where he first impressed her.

Michelle had warned her mother that she wanted to solely focus on her work before meeting Obama. The couple's first date was to Spike Lee's film Do the Right Thing (1989). In their first interest in each other, Barack Obama said Michelle had a "opposites attract" situation, since she was "adventurous" at the time. They married on October 3, 1992. Michelle Ann (born 1998) and Natasha (born 2001) after suffering a miscarriage, she underwent vitro fertilisation to produce their daughters Malia Ann (born 1998) and Natasha (known as Sasha).

The Obama family lived on Chicago's South Side, where Barack taught at the University of Chicago Law School. In 1996, he was first elected to the state senator and then to the Senate in 2004. They stayed in Chicago after Barack's election rather than going to Washington, DC, because they felt it was better for their daughters. Michelle Obama pledged to be away overnight just once a week during her husband's 2008 campaign for President Barack Obama, but the couple's second day is the second.

When considering her first career change, Jarrett requested that her then-fiancé consult with her future manager, Valerie Jarrett; Jarrett became one of her husband's top consultants; The marital relationship has ebbs and flows; the result of an evolving family life and a recent political career have spawned several complaints about balancing work and family. "We were hungry and ill, but not so much romance," Barack Obama wrote in his second book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. Despite their family commitments and careers, they continued to try to schedule "date nights" when they lived in Chicago.

The Obamas' children attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools, a private school. Michelle, as a member of the school's board, battled to preserve diversity in the classroom when other board members connected with the University of Chicago attempted to reserve more seats for children of the university faculty. The school was enlarged in order to raise enrollment. Malia and Sasha attended Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., after also considering Georgetown Day School. Michelle DeGeneres Show that they did not want to have any children in 2008, in an interview with The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Laura Bush, Rosalynn Carter, and Hillary Clinton provided the Obamas with tips on raising children in the White House. Michelle Robinson, Michelle's mother, has moved to the White House to help with child care.

Michelle Obama was raised United Methodist and affiliated with the Trinity United Church of Christ, a mainly black congregation of the United Church of Christ. Rev. She and Barack Obama were married there. Jeremiah Wright was a student at the University of Jeremiah Wright. "Our links with Trinity have been strained by Reverend Wright's divisive remarks, which often contradict our own beliefs."

After heading to Washington, D.C. in 2009, the Obama family attended many Protestant churches, including Shiloh Baptist Church and St. John's Episcopal Church, also known as the President's Church. "To anyone who says that church is no place to discuss these topics, you tell them that there is no place better – no place better." Michelle Obama's general conference encouraged them to seek political wisdom, because these are not only political problems, but also human dignity and human potential, as well as the future we want for our children and grandkids.

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Career

Following law school, Obama became an associate at Sidley & Austin's Chicago office, where she first met her future husband Barack. She worked in marketing and intellectual property law at the company. She continues to have her driving license, but since she no longer needs it for her work, she has held it on a voluntary inactive status since 1993.

She served in public service in Chicago as an Assistant to the Mayor and then as Assistant Commissioner of Planning and Development in 1991. She took over as executive director of Public Allies' Chicago office, a non-profit group that encourages young people to work on social problems in non-profit groups and government departments in 1993. She served for nearly four years and set fundraising records for a charity that was still standing twelve years after she had left. Prior to working "to build Public Allies," Obama said she had never been happier in her life.

In 1996, Obama served as the Associate Dean of Student Services at the University of Chicago, where she established the University's Community Service Center. She started working for the University of Chicago Hospitals in 2002, first as executive director for community affairs and then vice president for Community and External Affairs, which began in May 2005.

During the primary campaign of 2008, she continued to serve at University of Chicago Hospitals but decided against part-time in order to spend time with her children as well as work for her husband's election. She then took a leave of absence from her position.

According to the couple's 2006 income tax return, her salary came from the University of Chicago Hospitals, but her husband received $157,082 from the US Senate. The Obamas' total income was $991,296, which included $51,200 she earned as a member of TreeHouse Foods' board of directors, as well as investments and royalties from his books.

At an AFL-CIO conference in Trenton, New Jersey, Obama criticized Wal-Mart labor policies shortly after her husband was seated in the Senate until she pulled ties shortly after her husband announced his candidacy for the presidency; he condemned Wal-Mart labor policies. She has also served on the board of directors of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

In 2021, the former first lady declared that she is "going to retirement." Despite being active in political circles, the former first lady has stated that she will reduce the workload to spend more time with her husband.

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