Barack Obama
44th President of the United States
Born 1961
Photo: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza · Public domain
«Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for.»
Barack Obama served as the 44th President of the United States from 2009 to 2017, the first African American to hold the office. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009; his presidency is remembered for the Affordable Care Act, the recovery from the 2008 financial crisis and the Paris climate agreement.
Key achievements
- 44th President of the United States, 2009–2017
- First Black president of the Harvard Law Review
- Nobel Peace Prize, 2009
Universities
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Harvard Law School, 1988–91; JD magna cum laude and first Black president of the Harvard Law Review.
New York, Manhattan
BA in political science with a focus on international relations, 1983.
Facts
- In 1990 he was elected the first Black president of the Harvard Law Review; the national press coverage brought him a publishing contract that became the memoir Dreams from My Father.
- He met his future wife Michelle Robinson, herself a Harvard Law graduate, in 1989 at a Chicago law firm where she was assigned to mentor him as a summer associate.
- After graduating magna cum laude in 1991 he taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago for twelve years while building a political career in Illinois.
- He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October 2009, less than nine months into his first term, a decision that surprised him as much as his critics.
Photographs
Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences; the author and licence are shown on each image.