Sarah Hurwitz | |
|---|---|
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| Born | |
| Alma mater | Harvard University Harvard Law School |
| Occupation | Speechwriter |
| Website | SarahHurwitz.net |
Sarah Hurwitz is an American speechwriter. A senior speechwriter for President Barack Obama in 2009 and 2010, and head speechwriter for First Lady Michelle Obama from 2010 to 2017, [1] [2] she was appointed to serve on the United States Holocaust Memorial Council by Barack Obama shortly before he left the White House. [3]
Hurwitz is from Wayland, Massachusetts. She attended Harvard University and Harvard Law School, and began her career as an intern in Vice President's Al Gore's speechwriting office in 1998. She was Chief Speechwriter for Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign and Deputy Chief Speechwriter for the Presidential campaigns of Senator John Kerry and General Wesley Clark. [4]
She was offered a job as a senior speechwriter for then-Senator Barack Obama in his presidential campaign days after Clinton conceded. Her first assignment for Michelle Obama was to work with her on her address to the 2008 Democratic National Convention. [2] She also wrote Mrs. Obama's speeches at the 2012 and 2016 Democratic National Conventions. [5] After a couple of years as a senior speechwriter for President Obama, Hurwitz became Chief Speechwriter for First Lady Michelle Obama and also worked on policy issues affecting young women and girls as a senior advisor to the White House Council on Women and Girls. [6] After leaving the White House in 2017, she served as a Fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University.
The Forward included Hurwitz in their Forward 50 list as one of 2016's fifty most influential Jewish-Americans. [7] She was also named to the 2019 Forward 50 List.
Hurwitz's book, Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life -- in Judaism (After Finally Choosing to Look There), about her rediscovery of Judaism, was published by Spiegel & Grau on 3 September 2019. [8] [9] [10] It debuted as the number 1 new release overall in the Jewish Life category on Amazon. [9] Its Kindle edition, which sold less than its hardcover edition, was also the second highest new Kindle seller in the Amazon Jewish Life category as well. The book was named a Finalist for the 2019 National Jewish Book Award in two categories: "Contemporary Jewish Life and Practice" and "Education and Jewish Identity," as well as a Finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature.
Newton Norman Minow was an American attorney who served as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. He is famous for his 1961 speech referring to television as a "vast wasteland". While still maintaining a law practice, Minow served as the Honorary Consul General of Singapore in Chicago, beginning in 2001.
David M. Axelrod is an American political consultant, analyst, and former White House official. He is best known for being the chief strategist for Barack Obama's presidential campaigns. After Obama's election, Axelrod was appointed as Senior Advisor to the President. He left the position in early 2011 and became the Senior Strategist for Obama's successful re-election campaign in 2012. Axelrod wrote for the Chicago Tribune, and joined CNN as Senior Political Commentator in 2015. Until recently, Axelrod served as the director of the non-partisan University of Chicago Institute of Politics. His memoir is titled Believer: My Forty Years in Politics.
Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama is an American attorney and author who served as the first lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017, being married to Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States.
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Aneesh Raman is Chief Economic Opportunity Officer at LinkedIn. A former CNN war correspondent and speechwriter to President Barack Obama, Raman has focused his career in recent years on the expansion of economic opportunity. He first wrote about that issue in a 2016 guest essay for Fortune Magazine. In January 2024, he co-authored an opinion piece for The New York Times entitled The AI Economy Will Make Jobs More Human.
Jodi Kantor is an American journalist. She is a New York Times correspondent whose work has covered the workplace, technology, and gender. She has been the paper's Arts & Leisure editor and covered two presidential campaigns, chronicling the transformation of Barack and Michelle Obama into the President and First Lady of the United States. Kantor was a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for her reporting on sexual abuse by Harvey Weinstein.
Capers C. Funnye Jr. is an African-American Conservative rabbi, who leads the 200-member Beth Shalom B'nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation of Chicago, Illinois, assisted by rabbis Avraham Ben Israel and Joshua V. Salter.
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Valerie June Jarrett is an American businesswoman and former government official serving as the chief executive officer of the Obama Foundation since 2021. She was the longest-serving senior advisor to U.S. President Barack Obama. She was assistant to the president for public engagement and intergovernmental affairs, overseeing the office of the same name, and chaired the White House Council on Women and Girls. Before that, she was the chief executive officer of The Habitat Company and served as a co-chair of the Obama–Biden Transition Project.
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Sara Hurwitz is an Orthodox Jewish spiritual leader aligned with the "Open Orthodox" faction of Modern Orthodox Judaism in the United States. She is considered by some to be the first female Orthodox rabbi, and is one of the first female Orthodox rabbis to be appointed by a synagogue. She serves as Rabba at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, and the president and co-founder of Yeshivat Maharat, both in Riverdale, New York.
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Yeshivat Maharat is a Jewish educational institution in The Bronx, New York, which is the first Orthodox yeshiva in North America to ordain women. The word Maharat is a Hebrew acronym for phrase manhiga hilkhatit rukhanit Toranit, denoting a female "leader of Jewish law spirituality and Torah". Semikha is awarded to graduates after a 3- or 4-year-long program composed of intensive studies of Jewish law, Talmud, Torah, Jewish thought, leadership training, and pastoral counseling. The ordination functions as a credentialed pathway for women in the Jewish community to serve as clergy members.
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Dana Ann Remus is an American lawyer who served as White House counsel for U.S. President Joe Biden from January 2021 to July 2022. Prior to her appointment as White House counsel, Remus was general counsel for Joe Biden's 2020 presidential campaign. Earlier in her career, she was deputy assistant to the president and deputy counsel for ethics during the presidency of Barack Obama, was general counsel for the Obama Foundation from 2017 to 2019, and was counsel to Michelle Obama.
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