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In a significant milestone, President Joe Biden has appointed Shuwanza Goff as the new Director of Legislative Affairs, making her the first Black woman to serve as the White House’s chief emissary to Capitol Hill. Learn more about this historic appointment.

Breaking the Glass Ceiling

Shuwanza Goff, a veteran congressional aide with an impressive track record, has shattered yet another glass ceiling in her remarkable career. President Biden’s decision to name her as the Director of Legislative Affairs marks a historic moment, solidifying her position as a trailblazer and a trusted leader.

A Proven Leader

Before this groundbreaking appointment, Shuwanza Goff served as the White House’s Deputy Director of Legislative Affairs and House Liaison. Her extensive experience and bipartisan appeal have made her a respected figure on both sides of the aisle. Her close partnerships with congressional leaders, coupled with her deep understanding of the legislative process, make her an ideal choice for this role.

From Capitol Hill to the White House

Shuwanza Goff’s journey to this historic role began with her service as a senior aide and floor director to Maryland Democratic leader Rep. Steny Hoyer. During her tenure on Capitol Hill, she played a pivotal role in advancing critical legislation, including COVID-19 relief, climate initiatives, tax reforms, and the confirmation of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

A Bright Future Ahead

As the new Director of Legislative Affairs, Goff faces significant challenges, from managing relations with House Republicans to addressing important policy matters. However, her reputation as a skilled policy professional with deep institutional knowledge equips her to excel in this role. Both Democrats and Republicans have expressed confidence in her ability to navigate the complex political landscape.

Congratulations, Shuwanza Goff

Shuwanza Goff’s historic appointment is a testament to her dedication, leadership, and commitment to public service. Her achievements open doors for future generations and emphasize the importance of diverse voices in positions of power. We congratulate Shuwanza Goff on this remarkable accomplishment and look forward to her continued contributions to our nation.

First Lady Jill Biden  will make history as the country’s first first lady to hold a paid job outside the White House.

Biden — who worked full-time as a community college English professor during her eight years as second lady — has said she plans to continue teaching during her time in the White House.

“I’m really looking forward to being first lady and doing the things that [I did] as second lady, carrying on with military families and education and free community college, cancer [the Biden Cancer Initiative], that Joe and I have both worked on,” Biden said  in a recent interview .” “And I’m going to teach as well.”

“It’s hard for me to think of it in historic terms I guess because I taught all eight years when I was second lady,” she replied when asked about the historic nature of her decision.

Biden has been an educator for more than three decades. She taught English at Northern Virginia Community College during the eight years her husband, President Joe Biden, served as vice president in the Obama administration.

She is planning to continue to teach at Northern Virginia Community College as first lady, but her office is not releasing any further details.

“As she did as Second Lady, out of respect for the privacy of her students and to preserve the integrity of her classroom, Dr. Biden will keep her teaching at Northern Virginia Community College separate from her public role,” Biden spokesman Michael LaRosa told ABC News in a statement.

Kate Andersen Brower, the author of several bestselling books on first ladies and the White House, described Biden’s decision to continue teaching as “unprecedented” in American history.

“It is unusual for a second lady to work but unprecedented for a first lady,” Andersen Brower told a news outlet in December. “I know from talking to the campaign that there is an understanding that she doesn’t know if she can balance both teaching and being first lady quite yet, but there is a sense of this is her hope and this is what she wants to do because she loves teaching, and it’s the career that she’s carved out for herself that is unique and different from her husband’s.”

Andersen Brower said Biden continuing in her professor role would not only be unprecedented but also hopefully a significant shift in the trajectory of first ladies.

“I think it’s incredibly important for a woman to have her own identity, especially when you’re married to a politician and now to the president,” she said. “The idea that you would have to give up your entire life for your spouse seems very antiquated.”

“I hope that people will accept Jill Biden’s desire to teach, and that she’s a wife and a mother and has a career,” added Andersen Brower, who coined the term “Professor FLOTUS” to describe Biden’s dual roles. “I hope that we’re at the point where we accept that, because I think if it was a man, we would definitely accept it.”

While second lady, Biden worked on support for military families, helped her husband with his Cancer Moonshot initiative and led initiatives to highlight community colleges across the country, all while teaching English and earning her doctorate in education from the University of Delaware in 2007.

In addition to her doctorate, Biden also holds two master’s degrees, both of which she earned “while working and raising a family,” .

Biden was forced to defend her Dr. title last year, after a Wallstreet Journal Publication challenged  her.

The op-ed’s author, Joseph Epstein, wrote that the use of doctor by Biden “sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic,” adding that, “A wise man once said that no one should call himself ‘Dr.’ unless he has delivered a child.”

“That was such a surprise,” Biden said on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” in response to the op-ed. “It was really the tone of it that I think that — you know, he called me kiddo.”

“And one of the things I’m most proud of is my doctorate,” she said. “I mean I worked so hard for it.”

Joe Biden also expressed displeasure about the op-ed, telling Colbert of his wife’s accomplishments, “She had two master’s degrees and she kept going to school all the time while teaching at night.”

In response to the op-ed, women took to Twitter to encourage others with degrees to add them to their name.

“Today I added “Dr” to my profile name. Thanks WSJ for the nudge,” wrote Dr. Laura Scherer, an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Medical School.

Biden is entering her role as both First Lady and college professor at a time when women currently make up nearly half of the workforce in the U.S., and nearly one-third of all employed women are working mothers

In his election victory speech, Joe Biden described his wife as both a military mom and an educator who will make a “great” first lady.

“She dedicated her life to education. Teaching is not just what she does, it’s who she is,” he said. “For American educators, it is a great day for y’all. You’re going to have one of your own in the White House. And Jill is going to make a great first lady. I am so proud of her.”

Source: Abcnews.com

Amanda Gorman is the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history, as well as an award-winning writer and cum laude graduate of Harvard University, where she studied Sociology. She has written for the New York Times and has two books forthcoming with Penguin Random House.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, she began writing at only a few years of age. Now her words have won her invitations to the Obama White House and to perform for Lin-Manuel Miranda, Al Gore, Secretary Hillary Clinton, Malala Yousafzai, and others.

Amanda has performed multiple commissioned poems for CBS This Morning and she has spoken at events and venues across the country, including the Library of Congress and Lincoln Center. She has received a Genius Grant from OZY Media, as well as recognition from Scholastic Inc., YoungArts, the Glamour magazine College Women of the Year Awards, and the Webby Awards. She has written for the New York Times newsletter The Edit and penned the manifesto for Nike’s 2020 Black History Month campaign.

She is the recipient of the Poets & Writers Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, and is the youngest board member of 826 National, the largest youth writing network in the United States. In 2017 UrbanWord and the Library of Congress named her the first ever National Youth Poet Laureate in the United States.

On Wednesday, Gorman became the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history, performing an original poem titled “The Hill We Climb” at the inauguration of President Joe Biden. She continues a tradition that has included such celebrated poets as Robert Frost and Maya Angelou.

In the roughly five-minute reading of her poem, Gorman called for healing and unity, alluding to the pro-Trump rally two weeks ago that turned into a violent storming of the U.S. Capitol.

“We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it / Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy / And this effort very nearly succeeded / But while democracy can be periodically delayed / It can never be permanently defeated,” she read.

She celebrated the beauty of the country’s diversity and called on Americans to rise to the occasion and leave their country better than they found it.

“We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother / Can dream of becoming president, only to be reciting for one,” she said.

Joe Biden, the President-elect of the United States of America, has appointed Nigerian-born Funmi Olorunnipa Badejo into his cabinet.

The President-elect made announcement when he named additional 20 members of the office of the White House counsel.

Badejo is a lawyer and an alumna of Berkeley Law College in the US, and served as ethics counsel in the same office toward the end of the President Barrack Obama administration.

She, alongside other lawyers of the Office of White House Counsel will be advising the President, the executive office of the president, and the White House staff on legal issues pertaining to the president and the White House.

A statement on the Biden-Harris transition website said that Badejo was general counsel of the house select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis which was chaired by James Clyburn, House Majority Whip.

“Her prior government service includes serving as Counsel for policy to the Assistant Attorney-General in the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, Ethics Counsel at the White House Counsel’s Office and Attorney Advisor at the Administrative Conference of the United States during the Obama-Biden administration,” the statement read.

Biden will become the 46th President of the United States after his swearing-in slated for January 20, 2021

He defeated the incumbent President Donald Trump in the November 3 presidential election after scoring over 300 electoral college votes

Although Trump rejected the election result claiming electoral fraud, he could not provide proofs and has lost numerous cases he filed in court.

President Trump was however, impeached on Wednesday for the second time having been accused of inciting his supporters to launch a deadly attack on US Capitol In a final push to stop the confirmation of Biden as the winner of the election by the Congress.

Biden had earlier In December 2020 appointed a Nigerian-American, Osaremen Okolo, a Ni, a member of Biden’s COVID-19 response team.

Before then, Nigerian-born Adewale Adeyemo has been appointed as deputy secretary of the treasury department.

On November 9th, President-Elect Biden and Vice President-Elect Harris announced their advisory council to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic with some of the nation’s leading doctors and scientists. At the helm is Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith with her co-chairs Dr. David Kessler and Dr. Vivek Murthy.

“Dealing with the coronavirus pandemic is one of the most important battles our administration will face, and I will be informed by science and by experts,” President-elect Biden said in a press release. “The advisory board will help shape my approach to managing the surge in reported infections; ensuring vaccines are safe, effective, and distributed efficiently, equitably, and free; and protecting at-risk populations.”

Dr. Nunez-Smith comes from Yale University, an Associate Professor of Internal Medicine, Public Health, and Management at the Yale School of Medicine. Her research focuses on marginalized communities’ health and creating an equitable and accessible healthcare system for all.

“Everyone is affected by this pandemic, yet the burden is disproportionate,” Nunez-Smith said in a statement. “We know communities of color are grieving at high rates and are facing substantial economic impact. The transition advisory board is setting a course for everyone in our country to experience recovery.”

According to the Yale press release announcing her appointment, “Munez-Smith is an internist and an expert in healthcare equity, is the founding director of Yale SOM’s Pozen-Commonwealth Fund Fellowship in Health Equity Leadership, which trains healthcare practitioners to address disparities in healthcare access and outcomes that affect people of color and other vulnerable populations. She is also the founding director of the Equity Research and Innovation Center at the Yale School of Medicine.”

Her official Yale bio lists Dr. Nunez-Smith as the Deputy Director for Health Equity Research and Workforce Development for the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation, Core Faculty in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program, and Research Faculty at Yale’s Global Health Leadership Institute. She comes from the Virgin Islands, earned a BA from Swarthmore College, an MD from Jefferson Medical College, and an MHS from Yale University.

We’re glad to have you on our nation’s team on this road to recovery! Congratulations, Dr. Nunez-Smith

Started from the bottom, now we’re here!

Kamala Harris, the California senator who ended her bid for president earlier this year, has been selected by former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee to be his running mate. 

This historic nomination makes Harris the first Black and South Asian woman nominated for vice president by a major political party. 

“You make a lot of important decisions as president. But the first one is who you select to be your Vice President,” Biden wrote to supporters Tuesday afternoon. “I’ve decided that Kamala Harris is the best person to help me take this fight to Donald Trump and Mike Pence and then to lead this nation starting in January 2021.”

Born in Oakland and a child of immigrants, Harris, a Howard University graduate and member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, Sorority Incorporated, is no stranger to being the first. In 2015, when she ran for the senate an Economist article highlighted her multi-ethnic background and rise to success billing her as the only contender in the race,  “daughter of an Indian cancer researcher and a Jamaican economics professor, she is the first woman, first African-American and first Asian attorney general of California.”

Harris has credited both her mother for immersing her in both her cultures and preparing them for the world, “My mother understood very well that she was raising two Black daughters,” she wrote in her autobiography The Truths We Hold. “She knew that her adopted homeland would see Maya and me as Black girls, and she was determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud Black women.”

After graduating from Howard, Harris went on to obtain a law degree from the University of California, Hasting, then began a career in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office. After becoming San Francisco’s district attorney in 2003, she served two terms as California’s attorney general becoming a trailblazer in the democratic party before a junior US senator in 2017. She gained nationwide popularity for her sharp question of then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and Attorney General Willam Barr in pivotal Senate hearings. 

Her presidential campaign, “For The People,” was met with initial enthusiasm, but as sentiment lagged she ended her candidacy in December prior to the Iowa primaries in 2020. 

Harris endorsed Biden in March saying that she would do “everything in my power to help elect him the next President of the United States.”

According to Yale Daily News and the Class Day Planning Committee member Shuyu Song, the writer was selected based on her ability to give a meaningful and memorable address to the class.

In recent years, most of the Class Day speakers have been politicians, including former US secretary of state John Kerry and former US VP Joe Biden.

“The committee cannot imagine a better speaker to commemorate our four years at Yale than Adichie,” members of the 2019 Class Day Committee wrote in an email on Sunday.

“She is an inspiring global citizen whose words, teaching and social activism have had an indelible impact on the diaspora and broader contemporary culture.”

Song also said:

“Given Adichie’s extraordinary experience and poignant literary commentary, we have no doubt that her participation in Class Day will be a memorable part of this day of celebration and address concerns that are relevant to our class as we reflect on the changes that we have witnessed on this campus in the past few years.