“Behind every great man there is a great woman.”

Senator Obama has one secret weapon in his wife, Michelle. The other is his chief confidante and valued adviser, Chicago businesswoman Valerie Jarrett. Just who is this hidden tower of strength? asks Jonathan Van Meter. 

Even our greatest leaders have someone holding up their back…even when we think it’s all done by themselves. Our democratic presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama (who will be our next prez!) has two great women behind him: his beautiful wife, Michelle, and Chicago businesswoman, Valerie Jarrett.

Excerpted from Vogue

One day in the summer of 1991, when Valerie Jarrett was Chicago mayor Richard Daley’s deputy chief of staff, the woman who worked in the office next door to Jarrett handed her the résumé of one Michelle LaVaughn Robinson. Robinson was a young lawyer at Sidley Austin, the fifth-largest law firm in the world, doing marketing and intellectual-property work in their headquarters nearby. The résumé highlighted the fact that the 27-year-old had grown up on the South Side of Chicago, had gone to Princeton and then to Harvard Law; what it did not point out was that her father, a city water-pump operator and Democratic precinct captain, had died of multiple sclerosis the year before, a shocking blow that led to a change of heart in the young lawyer about her choices in life. On the cover letter, someone at City Hall had written something like THIS WOMAN IS NO LONGER INTERESTED IN BEING AT HER LAW FIRM. SHE WANTS TO BE IN GOVERNMENT AND GIVE BACK. Susan Sher, the woman who worked in the office next to Jarrett, said, “She is made for you. This is exactly what you did.” Jarrett immediately picked up the phone and called the young lawyer in for an interview.

Read the rest here.

She is super-duper fly and is now my-mentor-in-my-head...

FYI, this is the source of the original quote from above:

The first printed citation I can find is from the Texas newspaper The Port Arthur News, from February 1946. This was headed - “Meryll Frost - ‘Most courageous athlete of 1945′”:

“As he received his trophy, the plucky quarterback unfolded the story of how he ‘came back’. He said ‘They say behind every great man there’s a woman. While I’m not a great man, there’s a great woman behind me.

Keep it strictly stylish!