Valerie Jarrett

Valerie June Jarrett ( Bowman; born November 14, 1956) is an American businesswoman and former government official serving as the chief executive officer of the Obama Foundation since 2021. She previously served as the senior advisor to U.S. President Barack Obama and assistant to the president for public engagement and intergovernmental affairs from 2009 to 2017. Before that, she served as a co-chair of the Obama–Biden Transition Project. She has been the CEO of the Obama Foundation since October 2021. Early life and education Jarrett was born in Shiraz, Iran, during the Shah's rule, to American parents James E. Bowman and Barbara T. Bowman. Her father, a pathologist and geneticist, worked at a hospital in Shiraz in 1956. When she was five years old, the family moved to London for a year, later moving to Chicago in 1963. Her parents are African-American of African and European descent. On the television series Finding Your Roots, DNA testing indicated that Jarrett is of 49% European, 46% African, and 5% Native American descent. Among her European roots, she was found to have French and Scottish ancestry. One of her maternal great-grandfathers, Robert Robinson Taylor, was the first accredited African-American architect, and the first African-American student enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Jarrett's father once told her that her great-grandfather was Jewish. Her maternal grandfather, Robert Rochon Taylor, was chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority in the 1940s.