Early Career

Young Career


Following high school, Barack Obama moved to Los Angeles in 1979 to attend Occidental College, staying two years. In 1981 Barack Obama transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialization in international relations and graduated with a B.A. in 1983. For one year, Barack Obama worked 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, a church-based community organization originally comprising eight Catholic parishes in Greater Roseland (Roseland, West Pullman and Riverdale) on Chicago's far South Side from June 1985 until May 1988. During his three years as the DCP's director, its staff grew from one to thirteen and its annual budget grew from $70,000 to $400,000.

Barack Obama entered Harvard Law School in late 1988, at the end of his first year was selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review, and was president of the journal his second year. Barack Obama, during his summer returned to Chicago and worked as a summer associate at the law firms of Sidley & Austin in 1989 and Hopkins & Sutter in 1990. After graduating with a Juris Doctor (J.D.) magna cum laude from Harvard in 1991, he returned to Chicago. Obama's election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review gained national media attention and led to a publishing contract and advance for a book about race relations, though it evolved into a personal memoir. The manuscript was published in mid 1995 as Dreams from My Father.

For twelve years, Obama served as a professor at the University of Chicago Law School teaching constitutional law. He was first classified as a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996 and then as a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004. He also joined Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a twelve-attorney law firm specializing in civil rights litigation and neighborhood economic development, where he was an associate from 1993 to 1996, then of counsel from 1996 to 2004.