Valerie Jarrett Biography Quotes 18 Report mistakes

Early Life and Family Background
Valerie June Bowman Jarrett was born in 1956 in Shiraz, Iran, where her American parents were living while her father, James E. Bowman, a physician and pioneering pathologist and geneticist, practiced medicine and conducted research. Her mother, Barbara Taylor Bowman, became a leading scholar and advocate in early childhood education and co-founded the Erikson Institute in Chicago. Jarrett spent her early years abroad before the family settled in Chicago, a city whose civic life and neighborhoods would shape her identity and career. Her maternal grandfather, Robert Rochon Taylor, chaired the Chicago Housing Authority, and the Robert Taylor Homes were named in his honor, an emblem of the family's long engagement with public service, civil rights, and urban policy.

Education and Legal Training
Jarrett pursued a path that combined analytical rigor and public-mindedness. She earned a B.A. in psychology from Stanford University and a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School. Returning to Chicago, she began her career in private practice at the law firm Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal (later part of Dentons), where she gained experience in corporate law and development matters. Her legal training prepared her for the intersection of law, business, and government that would define much of her professional life.

Entry into Chicago Government
In 1987, Jarrett joined the City of Chicago during the administration of Mayor Harold Washington, whose reform-minded leadership opened City Hall to a new generation. She worked in the Law Department as deputy corporation counsel, focusing on finance and development. After Washington's death, she continued in senior roles under Mayor Richard M. Daley, serving as deputy chief of staff and later as commissioner of the Department of Planning and Development. In those positions, she navigated complex projects that touched housing, zoning, and neighborhood revitalization, sharpening her reputation as a pragmatic, coalition-building manager.

Mentorship and Ties to the Obamas
While in City Hall in the early 1990s, Jarrett interviewed a young lawyer named Michelle Robinson for a position; Robinson asked if her fiance, Barack Obama, could join a follow-up conversation. That meeting began a lasting personal and professional bond. Jarrett became a mentor and trusted confidante to both Barack and Michelle Obama, advising them through career decisions long before national politics beckoned. Her relationships with other Chicago figures, such as political strategist David Axelrod and future White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, placed her at the center of a network that would later move from city to national leadership.

Private Sector and Civic Leadership
After leaving the commissioner's post, Jarrett joined The Habitat Company, a major Chicago real estate and management firm, as executive vice president and later served as its chief executive. She also chaired the Chicago Transit Board, the governing body of the Chicago Transit Authority, where she dealt with the practicalities of urban mobility and public infrastructure. Her civic footprint grew through service on boards including the University of Chicago and the University of Chicago Medical Center, as well as the Chicago Stock Exchange. These roles deepened her ability to translate between public policy, community needs, and private capital, skills that would prove essential in the national arena.

National Prominence: Campaign and Transition
Jarrett's longstanding counsel to Barack and Michelle Obama carried into the national campaigns of 2008 and 2012. She was a senior adviser during the 2008 campaign and served on the Obama-Biden Transition Project alongside figures such as John Podesta and Pete Rouse, helping to shape staffing, outreach, and the early architecture of the administration. Her transition work drew on decades of experience navigating government, nonprofits, and business in Chicago, as well as her fluency in building trust across constituencies.

White House Years
From 2009 to 2017, Jarrett served as Senior Advisor to President Barack Obama and as Assistant to the President for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs. She was one of the longest-serving senior aides of the administration and chaired the White House Council on Women and Girls. In these roles, she convened community leaders, business executives, labor organizers, civil rights advocates, mayors, and governors, and worked closely with colleagues including Vice President Joe Biden, David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, Susan Rice, and Attorney General Eric Holder. Jarrett's remit included opening the White House to voices historically distant from national policy debates and ensuring that local perspectives informed federal decisions.

Public Engagement and Policy Priorities
Jarrett's portfolio emphasized inclusion and tangible impact. She helped lead outreach around the Affordable Care Act, working with stakeholders to expand enrollment and demystify new protections. She championed equal pay and workplace flexibility initiatives, supported efforts to address violence against women, and helped galvanize public-private partnerships for girls' and women's empowerment in STEM and leadership. Through the Council on Women and Girls, she connected policy to lived experience, organizing summits and listening sessions to inform action. She also supported civic engagement initiatives and community-based strategies that complemented criminal justice reform and policing dialogues in a period of heightened national scrutiny.

Later Career, Boards, and Writing
After the White House, Jarrett remained active in public life without holding elected office. She became a senior advisor to the Obama Foundation as it developed programs in leadership training and civic innovation and advanced plans for the Obama Presidential Center on Chicago's South Side. She joined corporate and nonprofit boards, including Lyft and Ariel Investments, and continued her long association with Chicago's educational and cultural institutions. In 2019, she published a memoir, Finding My Voice, reflecting on leadership, mentorship, race and gender, and the lessons of moving from City Hall to the West Wing.

Personal Life
In 1983 she married William Robert Jarrett, a physician and the son of journalist Vernon Jarrett, a prominent Chicago columnist whose commentary on politics and civil rights influenced generations of readers. Although the marriage ended in divorce, they remained connected through their daughter, Laura Jarrett, who became an attorney and a journalist. William Jarrett died in 1993, and Valerie Jarrett has often spoken about balancing family responsibilities with demanding public roles, crediting her parents, James and Barbara Bowman, with modeling purpose, high standards, and service.

Legacy and Influence
Valerie Jarrett's career bridges continents, sectors, and eras of American politics. Born overseas to American parents devoted to medicine and education, raised in a city that forged reformers and pragmatists, and seasoned by decades at the nexus of law, development, and governance, she became a linchpin of the Obama era's approach to outreach and inclusion. Her influence is visible in the leaders she mentored, the policy coalitions she helped assemble, and the civic organizations she continues to strengthen. For many, her story underscores how durable change often arises from relationships, patient organizing, and the steady work of bringing diverse voices to the table, and keeping them there.

Our collection contains 18 quotes who is written by Valerie, under the main topics: Leadership - Freedom - Nature - Honesty & Integrity - Health.