Barack Obama is the 44th President of the USA. He was born in Hawaii in 1961 to a Kenyan father and American mother. His parents divorced and his mother married an Indonesian man, thus Obama lived in Indonesia between the ages of six to ten, before returning to Hawaii in 1972. He worked his way through college with the help of scholarships and student loans and went on to Harvard Law School.

 

Barack’s story is the American story — values from the heartland, a middle-class upbringing in a strong family, hard work and education as the means of getting ahead, and the conviction that a life so blessed should be lived in service to others. At Harvard, he became the first African—American president of the Harvard Law Review. After graduating, he taught law at the University of Chicago.

 

Obama served as State Senator for Illinois between 1997 and 2004. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004, winning by a landslide. This made him a rising star in the Democratic Party. He was a strong opponent of the Iraq War. His presidential campaign was the first to make full use of social media. His slogan “Yes, we can” helped him become America’s first African American president in 2009.

 

Obama’s term in office coincided with the global financial collapse of 2008. He inherited one of America’s worst ever economies. In 2009 he received the Nobel Peace Prize. He introduced major reforms to America’s healthcare system and sought a fairer taxation system. He began the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq. He also authorized the mission that led to the death of Osama Bin Laden. He was re-elected for a second term in November, 2012.