Can Desiree Rogers Make Washington Fun Again? Vanity Fair

Quoted via Vanity Fair:

Desirée Rogers, far right, with the rest of the First Lady’s team, photographed by Annie Leibovitz for the March 2009 issue of Vanity Fair.No previous White House Social Secretary has had a Harvard M.B.A. Nor have any talked openly about “branding” the Presidency. But Desirée Rogers, the glamorous Chicago businesswoman, social figure, and friend of the Obamas’, is a change agent. As she told me two days after the inauguration, she wants to be the producer of an inclusive show-and-tell from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

One of the first events Rogers organized was a White House ceremony to honor Lilly Ledbetter, whose fight for equal pay for women led to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which President Obama signed into law last Thursday. “You have to think of the social office as a conduit by which we bring to life the ideals of the Obama Presidency,” Rogers says. One of those ideals is service, and according to Rogers, “If we have an artist in the White House at night, we would inspire them to do community service in the daytime.” more