Law
Michelle Obama
Lawyer and First Lady of the United States 2009–2017
Born 1964
Photo: Lawrence Jackson · Public domain
«When they go low, we go high.»
Michelle Obama trained as a lawyer, worked in city government and hospital administration in Chicago, and as First Lady ran national campaigns on childhood nutrition, education for girls and support for military families. Her memoir Becoming is one of the best-selling books of the century.
Key achievements
- First Lady of the United States, 2009–2017
- Becoming, one of the best-selling memoirs ever published
- Launched Let's Move! against childhood obesity
Universities
Princeton, New Jersey
Took a bachelor's degree in sociology with a minor in African American studies in 1985.
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Took her law degree at Harvard Law School in 1988.
Facts
- Her Princeton thesis studied how Black alumni related to the university after graduating, and it was written partly from her own sense of being an outsider there.
- She met Barack Obama when she was assigned as his mentor at the Chicago law firm Sidley Austin; he was the summer associate.
- She planted the first vegetable garden at the White House since Eleanor Roosevelt's victory garden in the Second World War.
Photographs
Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences; the author and licence are shown on each image.