Who Is Sasha Obama?
Born in 2001 to then-Illinois state senator Barack Obama, Sasha Obama became the youngest White House resident since the children of John F. Kennedy following her father’s election as U.S. president in 2008. Her privacy carefully guarded during the two-term Obama administration, Sasha played basketball at the prestigious Sidwell Friends School and joined her parents and older sister, Malia, for official trips overseas, before enrolling at the University of Michigan in 2019.
Early Years
Natasha Marian Obama was born on June 10, 2001, in Chicago, Illinois. Her father, Barack, was then an Illinois state senator and her mother, Michelle Obama, was soon to begin a job as executive director for community affairs at the University of Chicago Medical Center.
Following an early meningitis scare, the younger Obama daughter grew to become a healthy, active child. Remaining with her mother and big sister, Malia, in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood after her father was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Sasha attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools and kept busy with piano, tennis, gymnastics and tap dance lessons.
By 2007, Sasha was on her way to becoming a national figure as her ambitious father campaigned for the U.S. presidency. She made an early television appearance in July 2008 as part of an Access Hollywood segment on the candidate’s family, though her parents later regretted including their children in the interview.
Education
In January 2009 Sasha entered Sidwell Friends School, a private Quaker institution that had previously served the children of Theodore Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton and Al Gore.
Sasha became a competitive swimmer at Sidwell but especially took to basketball; President Obama famously helped coach his younger daughter’s hoops team to a league title during the 2011-12 school year, before the negative attention from other parents forced him to step aside. Also involved in the performing arts, Sasha was among the D.C.-area children tapped to join the Moscow Ballet for a production of The Nutcracker in late 2012.
After graduating from Sidwell Friends in June 2019, Sasha caused a stir by bypassing the allure of an Ivy League education and Enrolling at the University of Michigan. Like many other students affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, she spent her sophomore year of 2020-21 at home with the rest of the family, tuning into classes remotely and tempting her parents with midnight baking sessions.
