your supposition seems to be a take on the previous attempts to tie some taint to Michelle Obama's appointment and salary the University of Chicago Hospital. Is this a recycle job?
Posted by on September 27, 2006 10:00
Mrs. Obama's boss explains
Posted by Mike Dorning at 10:00 am CDT
The University of Chicago Hospitals has offered its explanation for a large jump in salary it gave to the wife of Sen. Barack Obama two months after he took office. Michelle Obama's pay nearly tripled when the medical center promoted her to vice president for external affairs in March 2005.
Employer: Michelle Obama's raise well-earned
By Mike Dorning, Washington Bureau. Tribune staff reporters Bruce Japsen and David Mendell contributed from Chicago
September 27, 2006
WASHINGTON -- Officials at the University of Chicago Hospitals on Tuesday explained a large salary jump for Sen. Barack Obama's wife shortly after he took office as a normal promotion that reflected expanded duties in her job as a liaison with the South Side community surrounding the medical center.
Michelle Obama was promoted to vice president for external affairs in March 2005, two months after her husband took office in the Senate. According to a tax return released by the senator this week, the promotion nearly tripled her income from the hospitals from $121,910 in 2004 to $316,962 in 2005.
Hospitals spokesman John Easton said Obama's salary was in line with the compensation received by the not-for-profit medical center's 16 other vice presidents.
A tax return for the hospitals covering the 12 months ended June 30, 2005, shows most of the organization's vice presidents earning between $291,000 and $362,000.
Easton said the hospitals had made a determined effort to deepen their connections to the surrounding community, beginning in 2002, when Obama was hired for the new position of executive director for community affairs.
"There was a real initiative by the university and the hospitals to have a real relationship with the community," Easton said. "Over time, she developed a staff. . . . It went from zero staff to Michelle and 10 staff."
Michael Riordan, who was University of Chicago Hospitals president at the time, said he had planned early on for the position to evolve into a vice president's post as a way of showing the organization's commitment to community outreach.
"I knew where I wanted to go with this position," said Riordan, who now is the top executive of the Greenville Hospital System in South Carolina. "I wanted to identify someone to grow into it."
Riordan said Obama's promotion had nothing to do with her husband becoming a U.S. senator.
"She was hired before Barack was Barack," Riordan said. "She is worth her weight in gold, and she is just terrific."
Easton said the hospitals' management had discussed a promotion to vice president with Obama previously but that she had been reluctant to undertake the commitment until her husband's Senate campaign was finished. In part, she wanted to wait until her family had made a decision on whether to maintain their primary residence in Illinois, which they did, and she had a better sense of the demands on her time as a senator's wife, he said.
At the time Obama was promoted to vice president, Easton added, she also had "at least one other, more lucrative offer" from a potential employer, though he declined to identify the competing organization.
Easton said the hospital management believed she merited the promotion based on a series of achievements. They included expansion of the institution's women and minority vendor purchases, rejuvenation of its volunteer program and work she did to help set up a collaborative effort with South Side clinics and doctors' offices to provide primary care for low-income residents who otherwise would seek treatment at the emergency room.
In explaining her salary increase, Easton and a spokesman for the senator both stressed her educational background, which includes an undergraduate degree from Princeton University and a law degree from Harvard.
Obama's new salary is significantly higher than her annual earnings during the seven prior years for which the Obamas have released their taxes. During those years, her wages ranged from a low of $50,343 in 1999 to a high of $121,910 in 2004.
After Obama's graduation from Harvard Law School in 1988, she worked for a few years as an associate at the corporate law firm Sidley Austin in Chicago. Such law practices typically pay lucrative salaries.
But after a few years, Obama moved into a series of positions in local government and non-profit organizations, which typically pay lower salaries.
According to a biography supplied by the medical center, she moved from the law firm to work first as an assistant to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and then as the assistant commissioner of planning and development.
In 1993 she became the founding executive director of Public Allies Chicago, an AmeriCorps national service program. She later worked as an associate dean of student services at the University of Chicago, a position she held until she was hired by the University of Chicago Hospitals.
Posted by on September 27,
Michelle Obama appointed vice president for community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals
High School: Whitney M. Young High School, Chicago, IL (1981)
University: BA Sociology, Princeton University (1985)
Law School: JD, Harvard Law School (1988)
Administrator: Assoc. Dean of Students & Dir. Community Service, University of Chicago (1997-2005)
University of Chicago Hospitals VP Community and External Affairs (2005-)
University of Chicago Hospitals Executive Director of Community Affairs (2001-05)
Illinois State Official Asst. Commissioner of Planning and Development, Chicago (past)
Sidley Austin Associate
Member of the Board of Treehouse Foods (2005)
Chicago Council on Global Affairs Board of Directors
Chicago Office of Public Allies Executive Director (1993-)
May 9, 2005
Michelle Obama has been appointed vice president for community and external affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals. Obama, who was previously the executive director for community affairs at the Hospitals, will be responsible for all programs and initiatives that involve the relationship between the Hospitals and the community. She will also take over management of the Hospitals' business diversity program.
Prior to joining the Hospitals, Obama worked as an associate dean of student services for the University of Chicago where she developed the University's first office of community service. She came to the Hospitals in 2002 and quickly built up programs for community relations, neighborhood outreach, volunteer recruitment, staff diversity and minority contracting.
"We have been impressed with the care, imagination and energy that Michelle has brought to every project she has worked on since coming to the Hospitals," said Michael Riordan, president and CEO of the Hospitals. "We are excited to have her join the ranks of senior management. She brings to our team a new level of compassion, commitment and close connections to the community.
http://www.uchospitals.edu/news/2005/20050509-obama.html
In 1993, Michelle grabbed an offer to be the founding executive director of the Chicago office of Public Allies, part of President Bill Clinton's AmeriCorps effort.
The position brought her closer to the community work she longed for; it meant helping promising young people enter public service. Public Allies found them, trained them and matched them up with internships -- all of which Michelle had to organize.
She created an office, a board of directors and a pot of money from scratch, setting a "template'' for 11 offices that would follow, said Paul Schmitz, national Public Allies CEO.
Displaying fundraising and strategizing skills, Michelle put together a board of people who could help Public Allies raise money and "left it with about a one-year reserve, which none of our sites since have had. She built it to last,'' Schmitz said.
By 1996, the University of Chicago offered a job as associate dean of students that extended Michelle's work with volunteerism. As director of the University Community Service Center, she located and supported the volunteer work of students.
Hearing of her work, then U. of C. Hospitals president Michael Riordan offered Michelle a job in 2002 as the hospital's executive director of community affairs, serving as liaison between the institution and its surrounding community of rich and poor.
In "probably the most unique interview I've ever had,'' Riordan said, Michelle brought her younger daughter with her in a "little car-seat carrier.''
Web sites pounce
Two months after Obama's January 2005 swearing-in as U.S. senator, Michelle was promoted to vice president of external affairs and community relations. Tax returns showed her total compensation that year went from $122,000 to $317,000, though hospital officials say some of the latter figure includes a one-time pension payout and a bonus.
By then, among other things, Michelle had expanded a two-person part-time office to a staff of 17, grown the number of volunteers into the hospital from 200 to nearly 1,000, and quadrupled the number of hospital employees who volunteered outside the hospital to 800, officials said.
Even so, some have questioned if Obama's new status triggered Michelle's promotion. Riordan insists the position had been discussed well before Obama became U.S. senator.
"I wanted to send a strong message to our community that I was committed to it, so I wanted to make this a vice presidential position,'' Riordan said.
Obama, 41, the wife of United States Senator Barack Obama, was born in Chicago and attended Whitney M. Young Magnet High School. She graduated cum laude from Princeton University with a B.A. in sociology in 1985 and earned her J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she met her husband, in 1988. Obama then worked as an associate at the law firm of Sidley & Austin in Chicago. After spending a few years in the private sector, Obama moved into the public sector working first as an assistant to the mayor and then as the assistant commissioner of planning and development for the City of Chicago.
She then turned her attention to the non-profit sector. In 1993, she became the founding executive director of Public Allies Chicago, an Americorps National Service Program. Through her work with Public Allies in Chicago, Obama was able to provide internship opportunities and leadership training to hundreds of young adults interested in pursuing careers in the public sector.
Obama serves on a variety of boards and commissions including the board of the Otho S.A. Sprague Memorial Institute, Facing History and Ourselves, and the Muntu Dance Company. She is a former member of the Commission on Chicago Landmarks.
Michelle R. Obama
Michelle R. Obama, age 43, was elected as a Director on June 6, 2005. Since March 2005, Ms. Obama has served as the Vice President for Community and External Affairs for the University of Chicago Hospitals. From September 2001 to March 2005, Ms. Obama served as Executive Director of Community Affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals. In addition, Ms. Obama served as Associate Dean of Students and Director of Community Service for the University of Chicago from September 1997 to March 2005. Ms. Obama also has held numerous positions in the public and non-profit sectors, including Executive Director of the Chicago Office of Public Allies, Assistant Commissioner of Planning and Development for the City of Chicago and Assistant to the Mayor of the City of Chicago. Ms. Obama holds a B.A. from Princeton University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. Ms. Obama is a member of the Audit Committee and the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee of our Board of Directors.
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