First Black White House Social Secretary: Desiree Rogers

President-elect Barack Obama named business executive Desiree Rogers as his White House social secretary this week. She is the first Black American to hold the position. Ms. Rogers has been a major social and civic figure in Chicago for years and is a longtime friend of the Obamas formerly served as president of social networking for Allstate Financial, and as president of Peoples and North Shore Gas. She will be responsible for staging every event or ceremony that occurs at the White House.

Desiree Rogers will have one of the most important jobs in the East Wing -- the domain of the first lady -- which oversees the social events in the White House. Some of the first events that she will be responsible for will be some of the inaugural events. The first event in the White House that she is responsible is the governor's ball in February.

She has known Michelle for about 20 years. She met her through her brother, Craig Robinson. Her ex-husband played basketball with him at Princeton. She went on to become close friends with Valerie Jarrett, one of President-elect Obama’s senior advisers, who grew up on the same block on South Greenwood Avenue as John Rogers.
Ms. Rogers was raised in New Orleans and arrived in Chicago after picking up an undergraduate degree from Wellesley College and an MBA from Harvard.
In late 1999 Rogers, quit the board of the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art along with the three other minority women on the board, to protest what they regarded as a slow pace on diversity issues. They were the only female minority members among the museum's 63 trustees.

She is on the boards of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois, the Northwestern Memorial Foundation and The Polk Foundation. Rogers is Vice-Chairman of the Lincoln Park Zoo and serves on the executive committee of Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. Previously, she served as the Chairman of the Board of the Chicago Children's Museum. Rogers is also a major contributor to fund-raisers to help Chicago win its bid for the 2016 Olympics, donating over $100,000.

According to an interview last year with the HistoryMakers, a Black oral history project, Rogers' favorite saying is "laissez les bon temps rouler," (the New Orleans motto “let the good times roll.” She is known as a great cook and entertainer and resides in Chicago with her daughter, Victoria.