Barack Obama (born August 4, 1961) served as the 44th U.S. president from 2009 to 2017, making history as the first African American to hold the office, after representing Illinois in the U.S. Senate. A graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the first Black president of the Harvard Law Review, he worked as a community organizer and civil rights attorney before winning the 2008 election against John McCain, with Joe Biden as his running mate. His first term included the response to the Great Recession (Recovery Act), the Affordable Care Act, the Dodd-Frank financial reforms, the killing of Osama bin Laden (Operation Neptune Spear), and the end of the Iraq War, earning him the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. Re-elected in 2012 over Mitt Romney, his second term focused on gun control after the Sandy Hook shooting, climate action via the Paris Agreement, the Iran nuclear deal, normalized relations with Cuba, and he became the first sitting president to support same-sex marriage. After leaving office in 2017, he remained politically active, campaigning for Joe Biden in 2020, and authored three books, including Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope.