The One to See If You Want In

New Orleans native and longtime Chicago resident Desiree Rogers is the Obama administration's social secretary. —Photo by Sally Ryan/The New York Times/Redux

For every one stride Desirée Rogers takes, you take two, trying to keep up as she hurries through the White House.

She is the new social secretary, the doyenne of state dinners, the honcho of hospitality, with society and civilization resting on her shoulders as she briskly descends from her East Wing office, blows past Marine guards in the White House hush that seems all the more noticeable when punctuated by the percussion of her designer black heels, with red soles flashing.

This is her afternoon walk, from East Wing to West Wing. She takes it to give herself a moment to soak in history. She doesn't give herself a lot of time.

"I am big on efficiencies, and I'm trying to get as much as I can out of the moment," says Rogers, 49, a Chicago businesswoman, a Harvard MBA, the first African American social secretary at the White House.

Divorced from Chicago businessman John Rogers, another close Obama associate, and co-chairman of the inauguration. Black slacks, flared, and a crisp white shirt. Pearls.

She has appeared in Vogue. She is the sort of woman who makes other women want to touch up their lipstick. She wields the power of fashion and the power of her position, no cuteness or coyness or deferential sweetness on view. She opens a French door to the Rose Garden, her destination, and steps outside.

The rose bushes have been pruned, and the sunlight is wintry on white columns, but it's all she needs.

She says: "That is typically the picture I have seen since I was a young child, of the president making that walk between the two wings. And so that is when I daydream about, 'Oh my goodness, I really am here!' "

May you ask another question? No, that's enough, she says politely. She strides back to her office, back to work.

This is no tea-party social secretary.

* * *

The White House social secretary is impresario for the president, organizer of all White House social functions.

"It is one of the most political jobs in the White House," says Ann Stock, social secretary during the Clinton administration. Stock invited Rogers to her house in November and they talked about the job.

"You are running a communications agency with a business strategy and a marketing strategy," she says. "If you look at Desirée's job, she . . . has to work with the president, the political shop, the Cabinet shop, the legislative shop."

"Her boss will ostensibly be Michelle Obama," says Carl Sferrazza Anthony, historian of the National First Ladies Library. "But she is really working for the president and Mrs. Obama and will be tailoring all kinds of entertainment. Not just state dinners, but events based on what the president and first lady are intending to signify and symbolize."

In Washington, there is fascination with Rogers: How she will transform the job, whom she will be? Will the White House once again be the setting for spectacular state dinners? The Bushes hosted only six in eight years.

Upstairs, in her East Wing office, Rogers turns down Earth, Wind and Fire, playing low in the background.

She has not yet hung her own paintings. The office is painted a creamy white, and there is a glow, the same kind of soft lighting they used in black-and-white movies. Lighting that makes old movie stars more beautiful.

Outside the office, four young staff members are intently working at computers. She says she is working on incorporating into White House social life tenets of the Obama campaign's inventive outreach.

She says she will try to celebrate "all things American." American art, film, dance, music; American scientists and scholars.

"It doesn't always have to be cookie-cutter: 'This is about art.' Well, what's wrong with mixing art and science? What is wrong with mixing artists and scientists together with educators? How can you bring people together to address some of the issues that face us in a more creative way? Even if the dialogue only begins here, it is a move in the right direction."

You ask about state dinners.

"One of the things I was shocked to learn early on is there were only 130, 140 seats," she says.

Guest selection involves careful winnowing. Her democratic instincts make her worry about this.

"It would be great to have someone invited purely by luck or chance," she says. A regular person? "I would just call them an American, because I think all of us in our own way have something to offer."

With her power, with a certain star quality, what does she think people think of her, of the way she presents herself? "I like to get things done. . . . I will never rest on the past."

* * *

Desirée Rogers was born in New Orleans. Her mother, Joyce Glapion, ran day-care centers. Her father, Roy Glapion, was an athletic director and a city council member.

Her mother says Desirée wasn't a joiner. From her home in New Orleans, Rogers's mother recalls that by the time Desirée was 6, she was already driven and focused. "I never had to say, 'Go do your homework.' She wasn't any help in the house, but other than that she was a good kid. . . . She's an amazing human being."

Her mother doesn't know where Rogers developed her sense of style: "I can remember as a small child, we would go into a house she had never seen. She wanted to see the whole thing.

She would say she had to go to the bathroom and she would walk through and see it." Rogers graduated from Academy of the Sacred Heart in New Orleans. From there, she went to Wellesley College and graduated with a BA in political science.

From Wellesley, she went to Harvard. It was there that John Rogers first saw her. A rising entrepreneur, he had come to Cambridge to give a talk about starting his business.

She recalls: "I met him when I moved to Chicago. He said, 'I saw you at Harvard.' I said, 'Okay.' " They had friends in common.

"Many of us went to school out East and got to know each other," she says. "And certainly there was the whole Hyde Park connection and the University of Chicago connection." (She met Michelle Obama through Michelle's brother, Craig. John Rogers had played basketball with Craig Robinson at Princeton.)

John Rogers's mother, Jewel Lafontant-Mankarious, was a civil rights activist and an adviser to Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon. She was a founding member of the Congress of Racial Equality and she protested in sit-ins.

By his middle 20s, John Rogers had started a company, Ariel Capital Management, and by 1986 it had more than $45 million in managed assets. She and Rogers separated amicably and were divorced in 2000.

They have continued to appear in the same social circles. Described as a major fundraiser for the Obama campaign, John Rogers rode the train with the Obamas from Philadelphia to the inauguration. After the divorce, they continued to talk about how to raise their daughter, Victoria.

"There was not much to work out. We just did it," she says. "We were very communicative about how we wanted to raise Victoria," who is now 18 and in her first year at Yale. "At the same time, one of the key things that made this work is we each had our own territory. He always took her to museums and concerts."

The mother and daughter "would go shopping together. Or there was a restaurant we liked in Chicago that we would go to. Or the three of us would cook something from time to time."

In Chicago, Desirée had a circle of friends -- high-powered women, smart, influential -- who were also raising children. Her close friends include Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser to the president, and Linda Johnson Rice, head of Johnson Publishing, a dynasty that owns Jet and Ebony magazines.

Rice says: "I would say Desirée is one of the most trusted and loyal people I've ever encountered. She is also someone who will shoot straight from the hip and will tell you honestly what she feels and what she thinks. . . . When you are down in the foxhole, this is the person you want next to you because she will have your back."

"These women are politically savvy, tough-as-nails operators with significant influence and clout in Chicago's civic and cultural life," Laura Washington, a Chicago columnist, said in Chicago magazine.

"These are not tokens; they got there on their own talents and reputations. They are not dependent on any of the men in their lives -- black or white -- for their success."

Rogers recently worked at Allstate insurance, where she was in charge of creating a social networking program. Earlier, she was president of Peoples Gas and North Shore Gas.

Before that, she was director of the Illinois Lottery, helping to launch the Mega Millions multi-state game. When Rogers was offered the job of White House social secretary, she hesitated.

"Partly for me as a businessperson," she recalls, "it was very important this not be a job that I would be picking flowers all day -- even though I think that is fun. That is not what I want to do for my job. I don't think that is where I would add the most value."

Instead, she talks about "the importance of the time we are in. The history and the weight of the responsibility on this presidency.

The preparation to get to this point. It's wanting to make it work. Wanting all the hope and change and aspirations and pride that people have exhibited by selecting our president -- that we deliver on that. And it's a big wish for the nation. So we want to get it done."