Barack Hussein Obama born on August 4 1961 is the junior United States Senator from Illinois and presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2008 United States presidential election.
Obama graduated with a B.A. from Columbia in 1983 then at the start of the following year worked for a year at the Business International Corporation and then at the New York Public Interest Research Group.
After four years in New York City Obama moved to Chicago where he was hired as director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP) and worked there for three years from June 1985 to May 1988.
Obama entered Harvard Law School in late 1988. At the end of his first year he was selected based on his grades and a writing competition as an editor of the Harvard Law Review. In February 1990 in his second year he was elected president of the Law Review a full-time volunteer position functioning as editor-in-chief and supervising the Law Review's staff of eighty editors.
After graduating with a Juris Doctor (J.D.) magna cum laude from Harvard in 1991 he returned to Chicago.
He served from 1994 to 2002 on the board of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago and also from 1994 to 2002 on the board of directors of The Joyce Foundation.
Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996 In January 2003 Obama became chairman of the Illinois Senate's Health and Human Services Committee. He resigned from the Illinois Senate in November 2004 following his election to the US Senate.
巴拉克?侯赛因?奥巴马，出生于1961年8月4日，是代表美国伊利诺州的联邦参议员，2008年美国总统选举民主党候选人。
1983年在哥伦比亚大学取得学士学位后，奥巴马在“国际商务集团”和“纽约公共利益研究所”工作了一年。
1985年，他迁往芝加哥，并在之后的三年主持了一个社区发展计划。
奥巴马于1988年底进入哈佛法学院。第一年年末，奥巴马凭借其出色的成绩和在一次论文比赛中脱颖而出，被选为《哈佛法律评论》的编辑。1990年2月，他被选为该学术期刊的主席，任全职主编，手下有八名编辑。
1991年，奥巴马在哈佛大学获得了“极优等”（拉丁文的学位荣誉，magna cum laude）法学士的学位，并回到芝加哥。1994年至2002年，奥巴马分别在芝加哥森林基金会和乔伊斯基金会的董事会任职过一段时间。
1996年，奥巴马进入政坛，当选伊利诺斯州参议员。2003年1月，奥巴马被选为伊利诺斯州卫生公共服务委员会主席。2004年11月，他在国会选举中当选伊利诺斯州联邦参议员。
2008年11月，当选为首位非洲裔美国总统。