August 4, 1961 Barack Hussein Obama II, the first African American President of the United States, was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. Obama earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in political science with a specialty in international relations from Columbia University in 1983. From 1985 to 1988, he worked as a community organizer for the Developing Communities Project. In 1991, Obama earned his Juris Doctorate degree magna cum laude from Harvard Law School where he was elected the first black president of the Harvard Law Review. From 1992 to 2004, he taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School. In 1996, Obama was elected to the Illinois State Senate where he served until 2004. In 2004, he was elected to the United States Senate where he served until he was elected President of the United States in 2008. Obama has authored several books, including “Dreams from My Father” (1995) and “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream” (2006). In 2009, Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people.
Barack Obama is the 44th and current President of the United States. Born to a white American mother and a black Kenyan father, he is the first African American to hold the office. Prior to becoming the president, he served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate and received national attention during his campaign to represent Illinois in the United States Senate. A graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, he was a successful civil rights attorney before he ventured into politics. Elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004, he began his presidential campaign in 2007. After winning sufficient delegates in the Democratic Party primaries to receive the presidential nomination, he went on to defeat Republican nominee John McCain in the general election. He assumed office as the President of the United States in January 2009, a time when the country was reeling under the global economic recession. Expectations were high from the new president and the responsibilities on his shoulders, tremendous. Within the first few months he implemented several reforms in order to stabilize the economy and to boost its growth. He also completely overhauled America’s foreign policy. Obama was reelected to a second term as president in November 2012.
