People in the news

Valerie Jarrett

Senior White House adviser and Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Relations and Public Liaison (since January 2009)

(Gerald Martineau/TWP)

Why She Matters

In 1991, a young lawyer walked into Chicago mayoral aide Jarrett's office and asked for a job. That meeting with the future Michelle Obama started a friendship that would last for decades. Over the years, the Obamas have regularly asked Jarrett for advice and she has been a part of almost all of their major decisions.

That didn't change when Barack Obama decided to run for president. Obama sought Jarrett's counsel throughout the campaign, describing her as the ultimate "utility player," or someone who could step into any role. "I trust her completely," Obama says. The two talked every day during the 2008 campaign, and she often urged him to follow his gut when pollsters and political strategists had other advice, the Chicago Tribune reported.

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Background

At a Glance

Career History: Co-Chair of President-elect Barack Obama's transition team (November 2008 to January 2009); Chief Executive Officer of The Habitat Company (2007 to 2008); Executive Vice President of The Habitat Company (1995 to 2007); Commissioner of Planning and Development for the city of Chicago (... to 1995)
Birthday: Nov. 14, 1956
Hometown: Born in Shiraz, Iran, raised in Chicago, Ill.

Alma Mater: Stanford University, B.A.; University of Michigan, J.D.
Spouse: single
Web site

Path to Power

Like Obama, Jarrett has a somewhat unusual life story, something they bonded over when the two first met in 1991.

Jarrett's father was a doctor, and in the 1950s, he and his wife, Barbara, who is an expert in early childhood development, moved to Shiraz, Iran, about 500 miles south of Tehran. He was part of a program that sent American doctors and agriculture experts to developing nations, and Jarrett was born in 1956 at Nemazee Hospital, the brand-new hospital for which he father worked. They lived in Iran for six years, and moved to England for one year before returned to Chicago and settling in Hyde Park. "I had no awareness of race until we returned to the United States," Jarrett says.

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Despite her transient childhood, Jarrett is actually part of one of Chicago's power families. Her maternal grandfather, Robert Rochon Taylor, was the first black man to head the Chicago Housing Authority, and his father was the first African-American to graduate from M.I.T., eventually becoming an architect and the vice principal of the Tuskegee Institute. Jarrett's father, James Bowman, was not only the first black resident at St. Luke's Hospital but also the first to receive tenure in his department at the University of Chicago.

When Dr. Bowman was accepted to the residency, he was barred from living in the hospital dorm, and he was told he had to enter work through the hospital's back-door. On his first day, he refused and walked through the front door. The next day, the entire black staff waited for him so they could walk through the front door together, Jarrett says.

"My parents often told me that because I was both black and a woman, I should expect to have to work twice as hard," she adds. "They did not dwell on the unfairness. Rather, they readily admitted it was unfair, but a fact of life. They also believed that I would benefit from working harder and learning more."

During her childhood, Jarrett spent summers traveling, not just back to Iran but around the world to countries where her father would work and her mother would study education models.

Jarrett said she would assemble the syringes while her father did blood work for people in Nigeria, Ethiopia, Uganda, Egypt and a variety of other countries. "It made me comfortable talking to anybody at a very young age, and because I was an only child, I spent a lot of time with adults."

She got a degree in psychology from Stanford University and a law degree from University of Michigan and went to work at a law firm in Chicago, specializing in corporate real estate. She hated it.

Divorced since shortly after her daughter was born, Jarrett is a long-time single mom. When she had her daughter, it "triggered something inside me. I wanted to do something that she'd really be proud of me for."

City Hall

In 1987, Jarrett took a job in the law office of the Chicago city government working on economic development issues and real-estate deals. Mayor Harold Washington (D) died shortly after she got to city hall and Eugene Sawyer (D) took over. When Richard M. Daley became mayor in 1989, many of Jarrett's friends left but she stayed.

Jarrett worked her way up to become one of Daley's most trusted advisers, serving as deputy chief of staff. When looking to fill a job opening in 1991, friend and colleague Susan Sher recommended Michelle Robinson, who was working at Sidley Austin but wanted to get into public service. "She is made for you," Sher said. "This is exactly what you did."

Jarrett interviewed Robinson and offered her the job on the spot, "which was totally inappropriate because I should have talked to the mayor first. But I just knew she was really special."

Robinson considered the offer and asked Jarrett to have dinner with her and her fiance Barack Obama. At the dinner, Obama quizzed Jarrett about the job and Michelle decided to accept the post.

Jarrett and Robinson quickly became close friends, and when Jarrett left the mayor's staff to become the city commissioner of planning and development, she took her protege with her.

Habitat Company

In 1995, two years after Michelle Obama left city hall, Jarrett departed as well, becoming the executive vice president of The Habitat Company, one of Chicago's largest for-profit development firms, which oversees all of the city's non-elderly public housing.

She became CEO of Habitat in 2007, and served on a variety of boards and committees: including, the University of Chicago Board of Trustees, the school's Medical Center board, and the committee chairing Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympics. She also was the chairwoman of the Chicago Stock Exchange and was on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and that of the Chicago Urban League.

Following the Obamas

One of the most connected people in Chicago, Jarrett has also advised Michelle and Barack Obama. They stayed friends as each forged their professional paths, and Jarrett's parents lived on the same street as the Obamas in Hyde Park. "She's always one of the people that he and I talk to when we're about to make a move," Michelle Obama has said.

When Barack Obama's first book, "Dreams From My Father," was published, Jarrett threw a party for the new author and signed on as finance committee chair for Obama's 2004 Senate election. Jarrett advised the couple during the runup to Obama's 20008 presidential bid, and she stayed on as an unpaid, unofficial senior adviser throughout the campaign. After his victory, Obama immediately appointed her co-chair of his transition team.

Just a few weeks later, Obama named Jarrett to a position in his White House. As assistant to the president for intergovernmental relations and public liaison, Jarrett will oversee the White House's relationships with key interest groups and politicians, such as the business community.

She will also chair the White House council on Women and Girls, a group established in March 2009 to "provide a coordinated federal response to the challenges confronted by women and girls and to ensure that all Cabinet and Cabinet-level agencies consider how their policies and programs impact women and families."

The Issues

Jarrett served as an unofficial adviser and counselor on just about everything during the course of the 2008 presidential campaign. That hasn't changed since the Obamas have moved into the White House. Jarrett calls Barack Obama "Mr. President" in the West Wing and "Barack" in the more private East Wing.

A friend of nearly 20 years, Jarrett has the privilege of being able to be honest with the president, which was her primary duty during the 2008 campaign. Obama said they talked every day, and she would fly to meet with him whenever she had the time. "She participates in every conversation we have in the campaign," he has said. "She is involved in broad strategic decisions about our message and how we approach the campaign, and she's involved in the details of managing the organization. She's really a great utility player."

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Jarrett describes herself as a sounding board. She has also been described as the new president's eyes and ears at meetings he cannot attend.

Obama says Jarrett is always pushing him to trust his instincts, pointing to the pivotal moment during the 2008 campaign when he decided to confront the race issue head-on after the explosive sermons by Obama pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright were released. She also suggested that Obama end the well-received speech, a campaign highlight, by telling an anecdote about a young white woman and an older black man whom she had seen bond over campaigning for Obama.

Jarrett's other hat in the White House is as assistant to the president for public liaison. She has focused mainly on the business side of public liaison, talking with CEOs from top companies such as American Express and Citigroup and getting their reads on the 2008-2009 economic crisis. "I'm hoping they feel as though they're talking to somebody who appreciates their situation, even if I don't always agree with their perspective," said Jarrett, who spent many years in corporate boardrooms herself.

Housing

After dozens of years working as a government and private practice real-estate attorney, Jarrett is an expert in housing.

She served as CEO of The Habitat Co., which was charged with much of Chicago's public housing since 1987. Initially, the strategy was to integrate public housing by dispersing low -income units thorughout middle-class neighborhoods.

But in 1996, a court ruling allowed the company to shift its strategy, and Habitat pushed for a plan that demolished housing projects and built integrated affordable units alongside housing targeted at middle-class buyers. "We looked for balance, with the goal being a healthy community and we were extremely cognizant and mindful of not wanting to recreate horizontally what he had torn down vertically," Jarrett said.

The result was hugely successful for Chicago, but drew criticism from people who argued that the city and Habitat were profiting by tearing down housing projects. The company made nearly $7 million in fees and $11 million in administrative expenses since 2000, according to the Housing and Urban Development Department.

Habitat was also a major recipient of federal funding, most of it from HUD in 2004 and 2005. In those two years combined, the company received $74 million in federal grants, the majority of which came for a project to demolish and revitalize "severely distressed public housing." In 2008, Habitat received significantly less money, just $732,284, in HUD money.

The Network

Jarrett is most notably friends with Barack and Michelle Obama. They have been friends since Jarrett hired Michelle to work in the Chicago mayor's office in 1991.

She is one of the most connected people in Chicago, and now national, Democratic politics. She is still close to Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, whom she worked with for years, and she counts Chicago entrepreneur Penny Pritzker, Obama's 2008 national finance chair, among her closest friends. She is closely tied into Obama's Chicago network. Her father mentored Eric Whitaker and Anita Blanchard at the University of Chicago Medical Center. Both are good friends with the Obamas, and Blanchard is married to Martin Nesbitt, another close Obama friend, who served as the 2008 campaign treasurer. She served on the board of the University of Chicago Lab School with Michelle Obama, Martin Nesbitt and John W. Rogers, a friend and the former husband of ex-White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers.

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