Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States and the first African American to occupy the White House.  Obama was born August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. His father, Barack Obama Sr., was a Kenyan graduate student studying in the United States and his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, a white American from Wichita, Kansas.  The two were married on February 2, 1961 in Maui, Hawaii.  In 1971, when he was ten, Obama’s mother – who had remarried and was living in Indonesia - sent him to Honolulu, Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents Madelyn and Stanley Dunham for several years, where he attended Punahou, a prestigious preparatory school.  Obama was admitted on a scholarship with the assistance of his grandparents.

Obama continued his higher education at Occidental College, Los Angeles.  He later transferred to Columbia University in New York City, graduating with a Bachelor’s (B.A.) in 1983.  He attended law school at Harvard University, receiving his law degree (J.D.) in 1992. While at Harvard Obama was president of the Harvard Law Review. After relocating to Chicago he began working as a community organizer and later lecturing at the University of Chicago Law School on the subject of constitutional law.

In 1989 Obama met Michelle Robinson who at the time was an attorney at the Chicago law firm of Sidney and Austin. Obama was a summer intern for the firm that year.  Three years later, in 1992, they were married.  Their two daughters, Malia and Natasha (Sasha) were born in Chicago in 1999 and 2001, respectively.

In 1994, Obama was elected to the Illinois State Senate from an economically diverse district that includes Hyde Park (surrounding the University of Chicago) as well as working class African American neighborhoods in the heart of Chicago’s South Side.  Obama remained in the State Senate until 2004.

During his tenure in the Illinois State Senate, Obama helped craft legislation to create the state Earned Income Tax Credit which reduced the tax bill of working class families by an estimated one million dollars. Obama also supported early education programs for children of working class families and drafted legislation requiring the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital cases.

In 2004, Obama was elected to the United States Senate from Illinois.  During the campaign he gained national prominence as a keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention in Boston in July 2004.  The speech, seen by millions of Americans across the nation, combined with his overwhelming victory in November over Republican Alan Keyes, catapulted Obama into contention as a possible Democratic presidential candidate in 2008.  

On February 10, 2007, Barack Obama announced his candidacy for the President of the United States in Springfield, Illinois. He waged a political campaign that caught the imagination of millions of Americans.  On June 3, 2008, after all of the state primary contests were decided, Obama secured enough pledged delegates to become the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party. His broad appeal and message of hope, change, and “yes we can” - which had been his battle cry throughout the primary against New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, his principle rival for the nomination -  quickly became the central theme of his campaign against Arizona Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee, during the national election. His message continued to energize various segment of the American voting public including millions of first time voters.   

Obama was the first candidate in a presidential contest to utilize cell phone technology and the Internet to promote his campaign. He also raised more money, approximately $750 million, than any other candidate in the history of American politics. His unprecedented victory redefined the electoral map as he carried several key states such as Virginia, Indiana, Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio that had been traditionally Republican strongholds. By the end of election night Obama had racked up 349 electoral votes to Republican candidate John McCain’s 159 votes.

On January 20, 2009, President-Elect Barack Obama began his term as the President of the United States.