The day before the Obama Presidential Center opened its doors to the public on Juneteenth, a grand opening celebration featured world leaders, four presidents, musical superstars and thousands of visitors from Chicago and around the world.
The new, $850 million center is a sprawling, 19-plus acre campus in Jackson Park on Chicago’s South Side. It includes a museum with exhibits including a replica of Obama’s oval office, a community center, a regulation-size basketball court, a sound studio, a new branch of the Chicago Public Library, a children’s playground and winding walkways and gardens. A bronze statue of Barack and Michelle Obama greets visitors to the museum, which has an excerpt from an Obama speech, “You are America,” emblazoned across its top.
The new center was built and funded by the Obama Foundation, a 501c3 nonprofit officially launched in 2017 by the former president and first lady. In 2022, IP’s Ade Adeniji wrote that the foundation was, in some ways, “picking up where the Obama presidency left off.”
Its mission, “to inspire, empower, and connect people to change their world,” may sound vague, but it’s been undergirded over the past eight-plus years by initiatives like My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, Girls Opportunity Alliance, and other programs that aim to nurture and promote the leaders of the future. Nevertheless, the center itself accounts for the bulk of the Obama Foundation’s outlays so far.
While the Obamas can’t sneeze without drawing attention, the foundation and its work haven’t received much publicity outside of Chicago. But the new presidential center seems likely to change that. The opening was a multiday affair attended by politicians and rock stars, students and South Side neighbors. The project has its critics: Some compared the hulking, fortress-like museum tower to a “Klingon prison” and journalist Tina Brown dubbed it “Barack Tutankhamun Obama’s presidential pyramid.” South Side residents are concerned that the center will accelerate gentrification and displacement, and Fox News was quick to report that several subcontractors who worked on the project complain that they’ve yet to be paid.
Still, it was impossible not to enjoy the grand opening fanfare (even from a distance on live stream) with stirring speeches from the Obamas, and music by Common, Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Wonder rocking the stage. Young leaders introduced both of the Obamas, and a song, co-written and performed by Eddie Vedder and local middle school students, was a highlight of the show.
The Obama Foundation’s CEO, Valerie Jarrett, a longtime Obama friend and former White House senior advisor, described the center as “a challenge to the next generation of change makers, because our work is never done. In the words inscribed on the outside of the museum building, we each have the glorious task of continuing to improve this great nation of ours. This center may be named for the Obamas, but it is built for you.”
How the Obama Foundation is supporting “the next generation of changemakers”
Along with the new Presidential Center, the Obama Foundation’s programmatic work centers emerging leaders and the next generation, including through a global lens.
Among its better-known programs is My Brother’s Keeper, launched in 2014, before the foundation was officially established. Obama created the initiative in response to the death of Treyvon Martin, a 17-year-old who was shot by a neighborhood watch volunteer in Florida. Today, the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance supports a nationwide network of community groups seeking to prevent violence and increase mentorship support and opportunities for young boys and men of color.
The Leaders Program, a six-month virtual leadership development initiative, identifies and works to empower emerging leaders in Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe and the U.S. A few examples from 2025-26 include Manar Banessaidi, a Sustainable Development and G20 Advisor to the African Union; Henry Tse, the executive director of Transgender Equality, Hong Kong; Husna Jalal, who directs Women for Change International, and Elizer Darris, who was formerly incarcerated and is now the executive director of the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which works to end the criminalization of poverty.
Another program, Obama Foundation Scholars, located at the University of Chicago and Columbia University, provides leadership development and training as well as peer support for young people who have demonstrated a commitment to service in their communities. The Voyager Scholarship, which was created by the Obamas and Airbnb cofounder Brian Chesky — who gave $100 million to stand it up in 2022 — is a two-year leadership-development program that includes work-travel and mentorship opportunities.
The Girls Opportunity Alliance, started by Michelle Obama, supports the education and empowerment of adolescent girls around the world. At the opening celebration, Addison Belhomme, a film director and sophomore at USC, described being invited to speak at a Girls Opportunity Alliance luncheon when she was still in high school. “For a 15-year-old girl from Chicago, that opportunity was transformational,” she said. “It showed me that my voice mattered, and that my dreams were worth pursuing. First Lady Michelle Obama is living proof that when you’re a Black girl from the South Side of Chicago, there is no limit to what you can achieve.”
Two contrasting presidential celebrations — and who’s backing the Obama Foundation
The two presidential extravaganzas held over the last several weeks — President Donald Trump’s birthday bash and the grand opening of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago — couldn’t be more different. One was celebrated with a bloody UFC fight on the White House lawn, while the other centered diversity and celebrated the first Black president’s legacy, featuring monuments and spaces that honor many of those who contributed to that legacy, including John Lewis, Nelson Mandela, Eli Wiesel, Eleanor Roosevelt and both of the Obamas’ mothers. A South Side teen was also honored: The Hadiya Pendleton Atrium is named for a 15-year-old who performed as part of a majorette squad during Obama’s first inauguration. One week later, she was killed in a random South Side shooting.
Throughout the start of Trump’s second term, we’ve often touched on mega-rich donors’ eagerness to ingratiate themselves with the president — giving for his inauguration, scoring key roles in the administration itself, and backing his glitzy ballroom project. While the ideals showcased at the two events could not be more different, both the Obama Center and Trump’s projects reflect a nation in which megadonors are shelling out ever-larger sums to signal where they stand.
In the Obama Foundation’s case, that list of contributors is long, and includes familiar names like Bloomberg Philanthropies, The Eli & Edythe Broad Foundation, Einhorn Collaborative, Gates Foundation, The Joyce Foundation, Open Society Foundations, Oprah Winfrey Charitable Foundation, and the Pritzker Traubert Foundation. Individual donors include Connie Ballmer, Lynne and Marc Benioff, Brian Chesky, and Liz Simons and Mark Heising.
Note that some of the Obama Foundation’s past contributors may be shifting alliances — or playing both sides of the fence. Jeff Bezos, for example, donated $100 million in 2021 in honor of civil rights leader John Lewis, and to expand foundation programming. Since Trump’s second inauguration, Bezos has taken pains to ingratiate himself with the current administration. Nevertheless, he attended the Obama Center celebration last week, and passed on Trump’s birthday celebration.
One window into who’s still very much on team Obama is the foundation’s board. Connie Ballmer currently has a seat, as does Penny Pritzker, who founded the Pritzker Traubert Foundation with her husband Bryan, as well as early Facebook backer Sean Parker. Former Ford Foundation President Darren Walker is also on the board.
While Trump wasn’t named at the Obama Center celebration, both Obamas made clear their differences with the current administration’s policies and conduct. Obama praised “those ordinary people in the Twin Cities, who brave frigid temperatures, risk their own safety, standing shoulder to shoulder to look out for their neighbors, and sometimes look out for strangers, because they knew that was the right thing to do.” As Michelle Obama put it, failing to see the humanity in all people “puts us all at risk. [it] puts us all on a slippery slope, and once that slide starts, there is no telling where it stops… and no one, and I mean no one, has the right to sit in judgment of who is American enough.”
Throughout the proceedings, the former first couple emphasized the importance of growing, inspiring and supporting the leaders of tomorrow — and passing the torch to the next generation.
“People are a little discouraged right now, but I believe that we go through these cycles,” Barack Obama said during a TV interview before the center’s grand opening. “There is going to be a younger generation that pops up, and they are going to be leaders who pop up. And we have to get out of their way.”
Related Inside Philanthropy Resources:
For Subscribers Only
