Desirée Glapion Rogers is an American public relations executive. In November 2008 she was selected by Barack Obama's office as the White House Social Secretary for the incoming administration, the first African American to serve in this function.[1][2] Rogers graduated from the Academy of the Sacred Heart in New Orleans in 1977.[4] She earned a Bachelor's degree in political science from Wellesley College in 1981.[5] [6] Rogers earned a MBA from Harvard Business School.[7]
After graduate school, Rogers married John W. Rogers, Jr. and moved to Chicago, Illinois, where she began her career.[8] They had one daughter together.[7]
Rogers was named twice as queen of the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, a Mardi Gras krewe dating back to 1916. She was first queen in 1988. Her father was instrumental in leading the krewe from a dwindling band of fewer than 100 black men in the early 1970s to a robust, financially healthy and racially integrated krewe by the 1990s. Glapion served variously as finance chairman, president and chairman of the Zulu board. In 2000 Rogers reprised the reign in honor of her father, who died in 1999. Rogers' mother, Joyce Glapion, now retired, was also active in Carnival. [21]
Rogers is an Obama family friend. Her former husband is John W. Rogers, Jr., Obama's Inaugural Co-Chair, who was also a former teammate of Michelle Obama's brother Craig Robinson on the Princeton University basketball team. Rogers' brother and mother still live in New Orleans.
Rogers is a survivor of breast cancer, following a diagnosis in 2003.[3]
According to an interview last year with The HistoryMakers, an African-American oral history project, Rogers' favorite saying is "laissez le bon temps rouler."[8]
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