Barack and Michelle Obama chose the South Side of Chicago as the home for the Obama Presidential Center in order to build an active and engaging campus for everyone, whether visitors live across the street or on the other side of the world.
Since June 19, we have seen that vision come to life in extraordinary ways. We have had the privilege of enthusiastically welcoming over 220,000 visitors to the presidential museum, and hundreds of thousands more have explored the remainder of the 19.3-acre center, free of charge. Thousands of local students have participated in field trips and after-school programming at the center. Families have gathered for picnics, barbecues, Movies in the Park and impromptu line dances. And on these same grounds, rising leaders from our global programs and extraordinary role models have assembled to discuss new ideas, bridge divides and build a brighter future.
Carrying out a mission of this scale requires tremendous effort, and our team works hard every day to ensure an exceptional experience for every visitor and program participant.
Over the last 10 years, more than 4,500 workers have contributed to our mission, including those who helped design and construct this magical center, as well as those delivering programs that empower global change makers and improve the lives of boys and young men of color and adolescent girls. We are very grateful to them and proudly display their names on our Worker Appreciation Wall at the center, commemorating those who helped bring our vision to life.
Before we opened the center to the public, we partnered with four community-based organizations to identify and recruit local residents for approximately 200 front-line roles — our team members who would spend hours a day warmly engaging our visitors from around the world, answering an array of questions with a welcoming spirit and keeping our center clean and safe. Seventeen thousand people applied, and we hired tremendously talented individuals.
We knew these jobs would be demanding and wanted to give staff the tools and resources they need to perform at their very best. We worked with industry experts to help us build a robust staff training that is grounded in our values. In recognition of the caliber of employees we have working here, we designed a compensation and benefits package that is competitive and comparable to peer museums and cultural institutions across Chicago.
Understanding the tremendous work it takes to live up to our standards of excellence, our goal is to operate a workplace that treats all contributors with respect and where workers’ dignity is highly valued:
As our staff begins to consider union representation, we will approach their right to make their own organizing decisions in good faith, with immense gratitude for their many contributions, deep respect for unions and a sincere commitment to working collaboratively with our partners in labor.
We are greater than the sum of our parts. The center tells a story that the extraordinary history of the Obamas wasn’t made by them alone; it was made by countless people upon whose shoulders they stand and those who have stood by them through all the ups and downs.
And so we take seriously our responsibility as fiscal stewards of the Obamas’ vision, so every dollar we invest must create lasting value for our visitors to the center and our amazing program participants for generations to come. We wouldn’t be able to achieve this vision without our talented and dedicated team.
Valerie Jarrett is CEO and a board member at the Obama Foundation.
