Michelle Obama Biography, History, Asset and Net Worth

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama popularly known as Michelle Obama is a famous American lawyer, investor, entrepreneur, public speaker, writer, philanthropist and a humanitarian, who served as the First Lady of the United States of America from 2009 to 2017. She is the current wife of United States former President Barack Obama and was the first African-American First Lady. She was born on 17th January 1964 in Chicago, Illinois in the United States of America. She is currently 54 years old.

Michelle Obama was born in Chicago, Illinois in the United States of America to Fraser Robinson III, a city water plant employee and Democratic precinct captain and to Marian Shields Robinson, a secretary at Spiegel’s catalog store. Michelle Obama mother was a full-time homemaker until she entered high school.

Michelle Obama grew up in a two-story bungalow on Euclid Avenue in Chicago South Shore community area of the United States of America. Her parents rented a small apartment on the second floor from her great-aunt, who lived downstairs. Michelle Obama was raised in a conventional home. Her elementary school was down the street. She enjoyed playing games such as Monopoly, she loves reading and she also love to play piano, learning from her great-aunt who was a piano teacher.

Michelle Obama attended services at nearby South Shore United Methodist Church. Unfortunately, her father suffered from multiple sclerosis which had a profound emotional effect on her as she was growing up. She was determined to stay out of trouble and be a good student, which was what her father wanted for her.

By the time Michelle Obama was in sixth grade in elementary school, she joined a gifted class at Bryn Mawr Elementary School, which was later renamed as Bouchet Academy. After completing her elementary school, Michelle Obama attended Whitney Young High School, which happens to be Chicago’s first magnet high school, established as a selective enrollment school, where she was a classmate of Jesse Jackson daughter Santita.

During an interview, she revealed that she experienced gender discrimination while growing up, saying for example, that rather than asking her for her opinion on a given subject, people commonly tended to ask what her older brother thought. While she was still in high school, she was highly intelligent and was placed on the honor roll for four years. While still in high school, she took advanced placement classes and was a member of National Honor Society and has served as Student Council Treasurer. She graduated from high school in 1981 as the salutatorian of her class.

After completing her high school, Michelle Obama was inspired to follow her brother to Princeton University, where her brother graduated in 1983 and went on to become a basketball coach at Oregon States University and Brown University. During an interview, Michelle Obama revealed that some of her teachers in high school tried to dissuade her from applying for Princeton University, and had been told that she was setting her sights too high. However, she believed that her brother’s status as an alumnus in the university may have helped her during the admission process, but she was resolved to demonstrate her own worthiness.

While at Princeton University, Michelle Obama got involved with the Third World Center, now known as the Carl A. Fields Center, which happens to be an academic and cultural group that supported minority students, running their day care center, which also included after school tutoring. She challenged the teaching methodology for French because she felt that it should be more conversational. As part of her requirements for graduation, she wrote a thesis titled Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community.

During her final year project at Princeton University, Michelle Obama researched her thesis by sending a questionnaire to African-American graduates, requesting them to specify when and how comfortable they were with their race prior to their enrollment at Princeton University and how they felt about it when they were a student and since then. Out of the 400 alumni to whom she sent the survey to, fewer than 90 responded, and her findings did not support her hope that the black alumni would still identify with the African-American community, even though they had attended an elite university with all of the advantages that accrues to its graduates.

While at Princeton University, Michelle Obama studied sociology and focused in African-American Studies and graduated as a cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in 1985. After obtaining her first degree at Princeton University, Michelle Obama went on to earn her Juris Doctor (J.D) degree from Harvard Law School in 1988. While at Harvard Law School, her faculty mentor was Charles Ogletree, who has stated that Michelle Obama had answered the entire question that had plagued her throughout her stay in Princeton University.

While at Harvard Law School, Michelle Obama participated in demonstrations advocating the hiring of professors who were members of minorities and worked for the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, thereby assisting low-income tenants with housing cases. Michelle Obama is currently the third First Lady of the United States of America with a postgraduate degree, after her two immediate predecessors, Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush.

In July 2008, Michelle Obama accepted the invitation to become an honorary member of the 100-year-old black sorority “Alpha Kappa Alpha” which had no active undergraduate chapter at Princeton University when she attended.

Unfortunately, in March 1991, Michelle Obama father, Fraser C. Robinson III, died from complications from his illness. However, during an interview, she stated that the memory of her father has motivated her each day to aim higher in life and make him proud even in his grave. Unfortunately, Michelle Obama best friend Suzanne Alele died from cancer around the time that her father died. During an interview, Michelle Obama stated that the loss of her best friend made her think of her contributions towards society and how well she was influencing the world from her law firm. This was seen as a turning point for Michelle Obama.

Michelle Obama met her husband Barack Obama when they were among the few African Americans at their law firm at Sidley Austin LLP and she was assigned to mentor Barack Obama, while he was a summer associate. Their relationship started with a business lunch and then a community organization meeting where he first impressed her.

Barack Obama and Michelle Obama had their first date at the Spike Lee movie “Do the Right Thing” and they were very fond of each other. On 3rd October 1992, Barack Obama and Michelle Obama got married and the marriage is currently blessed with two beautiful daughters, namely Malia Ann Obama, born in 1998 and Natasha Sasha Obama, born in 2001.

After Barack Obama election to the United States Senate, the Obama’s family continued to live on the Chicago’s South Side, choosing to remain there rather than moving to Washington, D.C. Throughout her husband Barack Obama 2008 campaign for United States President, Michelle Obama made a commitment to be away overnight only once a week and to campaign only two days a week and be at home by the end of the second day to attain to her two daughters. Michelle Obama has received Shorty Special Award for GIFStar and Glamour Special Recognition Award.

Michelle Obama spent her early legal career working at the law firm “Sidley Austin” where she met her husband Barack Obama. She subsequently worked as the Associate Dean of Student Services at the University of Chicago and the Vice President for Community and External Affairs of the University of Chicago Medical Center.

Michelle Obama campaigned for her husband Barack Obama presidential bid throughout 2007 and 2008, delivering a keynote address at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. In 2012, she returned to speak at the 2012 Democratic National Convention and during the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, where she delivered a speech in support of the Democratic Presidential nominee and fellow former United States First Lady, Hillary Clinton.

As First Lady of the United States of America, Michelle Obama sought to become a role model for women, an advocate for poverty awareness, education, nutrition, physical activity, healthy eating, and a fashion icon. She is one of the greatest First Lady in the United States of America to have contributed tremendously to the promotion of women’s right, child’s right and has worked in providing for the physically challenged, less privileged and orphanage in her part to contribute to the society.

Michelle Obama is currently one of the richest and most influential personality and public figure in the United States of America with an estimated net worth of $40 million.