Valerie Jarrett, Vice-Chairman of the Board of Trustees and longtime member of the University of Chicago family, has been appointed to one of the top positions in the administration of President-elect Barack Obama.
Jarrett, who is also Chairman of the Board of Trustees at the University of Chicago Medical Center, will be Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Relations and Public Liaison. She will serve as a key adviser to the President, help coordinate the work of different government branches and agencies, and act as a liaison with public-interest groups.
"As she steps away from several important positions on the University and Medical Center Board, we shall miss her dearly," said James Crown, Chairman of the University's Board of Trustees. "But we applaud her willingness to serve her country, and we know our new President has recruited a superb advisor."
A longtime confidant to Barack Obama and mentor to Michelle Obama, Jarrett served as a Senior Advisor to the Obama campaign and is co-chair of the Obama-Biden presidential transition team.
Jarrett has been a leader in Chicago's business, civic, education, medical and government circles. For the last 30 months, she has led the University of Chicago Medical Center executive committee.
"Valerie oversaw a period of unprecedented growth in facilities, fundraising, recruitment and administrative consolidation at the Medical Center," said Dr. James Madara, CEO of the University of Chicago Medical Center. "She brought enormous energy to the Medical Center executive board. She knows how to get things done, and done quickly. Her experience in business and government gave her both the vision to make sure our plans extended far into the future, and the urgency to keep pushing toward our goals."
Her ties to the University of Chicago are longstanding.
"The University of Chicago has played an important role in Valerie Jarrett's adult life, just as it has for Barack and Michelle Obama. In turn, all three of them have held positions of importance in the University community," Crown said. "Valerie's connections here are extraordinarily deep and broad." She is a member of the visiting committe to the School of Social Service Administration.
Her father, James Bowman, is Professor Emeritus in Pathology and Medicine at the University and the first African American to be tenured in his department. The University's Bowman Society, which promotes minority health care and diversity in the biological sciences, is named after him.
Jarrett's mother, Barbara Bowman (A.M.,'52), taught at the Laboratory Schools while earning her graduate degree in education. She has a large extended family with roots in Hyde Park.
Jarrett was born in 1956 in Iran, where her father ran a hospital as part of a program that sent American doctors to developing countries. After a year in London, the family returned to Chicago in 1963.
Jarrett attended the Laboratory Schools. She then attended Northfield Mount Hermon, a boarding school in Massachusetts, from which she graduated in 1974. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in psychology from Stanford University in 1978 and a Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan Law School in 1981.
Between 1981 and 1987, Jarrett practiced law at two private firms in Chicago.
In 1987 Jarrett went to work for Mayor Harold Washington as Deputy Corporation Counsel for Finance and Development. Later she became Deputy Chief of Staff for Mayor Richard M. Daley. In 1991 she hired Michelle Robinson, who was then engaged to Obama, as a mayoral assistant. Later, Jarrett worked as Chicago's Commissioner of the Department of Planning and Development.
Jarrett has worked at The Habitat Company, a major real estate development and management firm, since 1995 and has been its President and CEO since 2007. From 1995 to 2003, she also served as Chair of the Chicago Transit Board, which overseas the Chicago Transit Authority. Jarrett is Vice Chair of the Chicago 2016 Olympic Committee as well as Vice Chair of Metropolis 2020.
—Prof. Kunle Odunsi
