Michelle Obama's Networked staff chief

by Mark Silva

Add another Chicago Network face to the Obama White House: Susan S. Sher, going to work as chief of staff for First Lady Michelle Obama.

This is the same professional pipeline that has delivered Obama adviser and friend Valerie Jarrett to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and also social czar Desiree Rogers, as well as aide Tina Tchen. Mellody Hobson, president of Ariel Capital Management and a Network member, was named this week to a new SEC advisory committee.

The Network is an organization of professional women in Chicago, with the connections that this group of 400 professional people, business people and nonprofit operatives considered "an important ingredient in their success stories,'' a spokesman says.

Sher, as vice president for legal and governmental afairs and general counsel for the University of Chicago Hospitals and Health System, has been reponsible for all the hospitals' legal, government, regulatory, and community affairs .

From 1989 through 1993, she served as First Assistant Corporation Counsel and from 1993 through 1997Corporation Counsel for the City of Chicago - responsible for representing the mayor, city departments, boards, and commissions on all legal matters.

She had been associate generalcCounsel of the University of Chicago before, and also a partner at Mayer Brown & Platt, specializing in Labor and Litigation. She is a 1974 graduate of the Loyola University of Chicago School of Law.

And now, she is chief of staff for the first lady, who oversees a considerable operation in the East Wing of the White House.