Barack Obama Profile

Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States. He was born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii USA. His name Barack means ‘one who is blessed’ in Swahili. His father, Barack Obama, Sr., was from Kenya and died in an automobile accident in 1982. His mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was born in Wichita, Kansas and died in 1995 of ovarian cancer.

Obama attended Occidental College in Los Angeles from 1979 to 1981. He then transferred to Columbia University, in New York City, graduating from Columbia in 1983. Obama worked in New York in a corporate position for a year. He then became a community organizer in Harlem for a year. In 1985, Obama moved to Chicago to work for a church-based social services organization.

Barack Obama applied for and was accepted to Harvard Law School, one of the top three law schools in the U.S. At Harvard, he became president of the Harvard Law Review. He was the first African American to serve in that post. Barack Obama graduated magna cum laude in 1991.

While at Harvard, Obama took a job as a summer associate at a Chicago law firm. The attorney assigned to mentor him was his future wife, Michelle Robinson. They were married on October 3, 1992.

Obama served from 1997 to 2004 in the Illinois Senate, representing the 13th Senate District on Chicago’s South Side. Obama lost in the 2000 primary for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 2004, he won election to the United States Senate.

After defeating Hillary Rodham Clinton in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primary, Barack Obama went on to defeat John McCain in the general election.

Barack and Michelle have two daughters, Malia born in 1998, and Natasha, born in 2001.