Valerie Jarrett

Valerie June Jarrett (née Bowman; born November 14, 1956) is an American businesswoman, attorney and former government official who has been the chief executive officer of the Obama Foundation since 2021. She was the longest-serving senior advisor to President Barack Obama. She headed his White House Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs and chaired the White House Council on Women and Girls. Before serving in the White House, she was the chief executive officer of property developer The Habitat Company and a co-chair of the Obama–Biden Transition Project.

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 from Chicago, worked on regional health systems based at hospital in Shiraz in the 1950s. When she was five years old, the family moved to London for a year, then moved back to Chicago in 1962.

Jarrett's father was the first African American to have a medical residency at St Luke's hospital in Chicago, and after his return to the US, to get professorial tenure at the University of Chicago medical school. Her maternal great-grandfather, Robert Robinson Taylor, was the first accredited African-American architect, and the first African-American student to enroll at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her maternal grandfather, Robert Rochon Taylor, was chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority in the 1940s.