Sarah Obama

Barack Obama is a prominent American political figure who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. He was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii. His immediate family includes his wife, Michelle Obama, and their two daughters, Malia Ann and Natasha Marian ("Sasha").

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama was born on January 17, 1964. She is an American lawyer, university administrator, and writer. Michelle Obama graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School. She worked at the law firm Sidley Austin, where she met Barack Obama. Subsequently, she served as associate dean of Student Services at the University of Chicago and as vice president for Community and External Affairs of the University of Chicago Medical Center. Michelle Obama married Barack Obama in 1992 and was the First Lady of the United States during her husband's presidency. During this period, she was an advocate for poverty awareness, education, nutrition, and healthy living. Michelle Obama delivered speeches at the Democratic National Conventions in 2008, 2012, and 2016.

Their daughters, Malia Ann and Natasha Marian ("Sasha"), were born in 1998 and 2001, respectively. Both attended Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. Malia graduated in 2016, and Sasha from Sidwell Friends in 2019 before transferring to the University of Michigan and later the University of Southern California, where she graduated in 2023. The girls were born at the University of Chicago Medical Center and, during their father's presidency, were the youngest children to reside in the White House since John F. Kennedy Jr. in 1961.

The family adopted a pet dog, Bo, a Portuguese Water Dog, in April 2009, which was given as a gift by Senator Ted Kennedy. A second dog, Sunny, was adopted in 2013. Malia Obama spent summers working in television studios in New York and Los Angeles in 2014 and 2015 and interned at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid in 2016. Sasha worked at a seafood restaurant in Martha’s Vineyard in 2016 and graduated from Sidwell Friends in 2019.

Malia Obama began attending Harvard University in 2017 and has worked as a writer, including on the Amazon Prime Video series "Swarm," and was involved in film projects in 2023. Sasha transferred from the University of Michigan to the University of Southern California, graduating in 2023.

Barack Obama was raised by his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, and his maternal grandparents, Madelyn and Stanley Dunham. Dunham, born in 1942, was an anthropologist specializing in economic anthropology and rural development. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and worked with organizations such as the United States Agency for International Development and the Ford Foundation. Dunham's work focused on microcredit and poverty alleviation. She died in 1995.

Stanley Armour Dunham, Obama's maternal grandfather, was born in 1918 and served as a sergeant in the U.S. Army during World War II. He lived in Honolulu, Hawaii, and died in 1992. He is buried at Punchbowl National Cemetery. Madelyn Dunham, Obama's maternal grandmother, was born in 1922 and worked in banking, eventually becoming a vice president of a bank in Hawaii. She was known for her influence and for reading Obama selections from the Declaration of Independence to instill values in him.

Barack Obama's maternal lineage is mostly of English descent, with smaller amounts of German, Scotch-Irish, Welsh, and Swiss ancestry. A genealogy study published in 2012 suggested that Obama is likely descended from John Punch, an African slave, through his maternal Bunch line, with subsequent generations of African Americans marrying white Americans and becoming landowners in colonial Virginia.

His father, Barack Obama Sr., was from Kenya and belonged to the Luo ethnic group. Obama's family history also includes distant relations to six U.S. presidents: James Madison, Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush.