Ms. Jarrett Goes To Washington

What makes Valerie Jarrett unusual in the Obama world is that she is a friend and confidant of both Michelle and Barack.

In 2007 I invited Valerie Jarrett to the spring Gridiron Dinner in Washington. I knew her from Chicago politics and it seemed clear that she was destined to play a big role on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. I worried—good hostess that I am—that she might be at loose ends before the dinner. But when I checked in with her, she said not to fret, she was hanging out with a cousin.

The cousin turned out to be Ann Jordan, wife of Vernon Jordan, the civil rights leader, powerhouse lawyer, Democratic activist, and Iraq Study Group member, who served as chairman of the Clinton presidential transition team in 1992. Ann Dibble Jordan is a former Chicagoan with deep ties to the University of Chicago, where she is a trustee emeritus.

Like the Jordans, Jarrett is one of those people, back home in Chicago, linked to everyone important. She is part of an elite civic, social, business and political crowd whose lives criss-cross and often intersect at the University of Chicago, where Obama taught law between 1992 and his Senate election in 2004.

It’s from her mother that Jarrett gets her pedigree as a member of Chicago’s African-American royalty… President-elect Obama and Michelle are part of this network. But Jarrett was there first and they belong to it partly because of her.

President-elect Obama and Michelle are part of this network. But Jarrett was there first and they belong to it partly because of her.

Jarrett met Obama when she wanted to hire his then fiancé, Michelle Robinson, for a job in Mayor Daley’s City Hall. That story has now been much repeated: Michelle told Jarrett, then Daley’s deputy chief of staff, Obama would have to check her out first and Jarrett went to dinner with the couple.

Fast forward: Jarrett is one of three co-chairs of Obama’s presidential transition team. On Nov. 14, word came that Obama tapped Jarrett to be a senior advisor and assistant to the president for intergovernment relations and public liaison. Obama and Michelle topped that day by attending Jarrett’s 52nd birthday party at the Gold Coast home of Desiree Rogers. Rogers was tapped by the Obama's on Monday to be the new White House Social Secretary.

Jarrett’s story starts in Iran, born in Shiraz, the daughter of Americans, Barbara Taylor Bowman and James Edward Bowman. Her father, a doctor who specialized in genetics and pathology, helped found the first hospital in that city. When Jarrett was five, the Bowmans and their only child moved to England and a year later to Chicago. The Bowmans bought the home they still live in on South Greenwood Avenue in the Kenwood Historic District a block away from the Obama house.

Jarrett’s mother—Ann Jordan’s cousin—Barbara Bowman, with a degree from Sarah Lawrence and a master’s from the University of Chicago, is a well known expert in early childhood education who co-founded the internationally known Erikson Institute. Dr. Bowman, a professor emeritus at the U of C, was the first African-American to get tenure in the biological sciences division.

It’s from her mother that Jarrett gets her pedigree as a member of Chicago’s African-American royalty. Bowman’s dad was Robert Taylor—the first African-American to chair the Chicago Housing Authority. His name is familiar to generations of Chicagoans because one of the city’s notorious housing developments—now demolished—was named after him. Ironically, he quit the post in protest when the CHA balked at building low-income housing in white wards.

Jarrett’s great grandfather, architect Robert Robinson Taylor, was the first African-American to graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His father, Henry Taylor, the son of a white slave owner and black mother, was a businessman.

In the manner of privileged Hyde Park-Kenwood children from smart families, Jarrett went to the exclusive University of Chicago Lab School before transferring to her mother’s alma mater, Northfield Mt. Hermon, in western Massachusetts for the last two years of high school. From prep school it was on to Stanford, then a law degree from the University of Michigan.