Speaker

The speaker of this Commencement Address is Michelle Obama, who was First Lady of the United States at the time of the speech.

Michelle Obama was born in 1964 in Chicago. She went to Princeton University for her bachelor and later got a degree in Law from Harvard Law School, despite neither of her parents being college-educated. Her father worked at the city water plant while also dealing with multiple sclerosis, a fact which Obama brings up in her speech when talking about the struggles of her own family:

And every morning I watched him struggle to get out of bed and inch his way to his walker, and painstakingly button his uniform, but never once did I hear him complain. Not once. He just kept getting up, day after day, year after year, to do whatever he could to give our family a better shot at life. (ll. 276-284)

She is now...