‘Zulu Queen’ in charge of Barack Obama’s guest list

Twenty years ago, Desiree Glapion Rogers was a Zulu Queen. When Barack Obama is inaugurated as president in January, she will become his White House social secretary, keeper of the keys to have-a-chat access to the most powerful man on earth.

Rogers, 49, is the latest of Obama's 'black' appointments, and the chattering classes have duly noted that she will be the first black woman in charge of the East Wing guest lists.

Her rise to such power and influence, however, is not quite as steep or unlikely as it may seem. Rogers is a scion of a black American aristocracy that after generations of waiting discretely in the wings has at last stepped onto the stage.

Zulu Queen? The title turns out to have nothing to do with Old Country roots, but instead reveals her status at the pinnacle of New Orleans society. Her father, Roy Glapion, ran the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, the city's top black carnival 'crew', and Rogers was the queen of their Mardi Gras balls in 1988 and 2000.

Her dad was also director of sports programmes for the New Orleans school system and a city councilman. Her mother ran a nursery school. They were as 'establishment' as a family could be. Desiree rose breezily through school to collect a Harvard MBA business degree, America's top ticket to wealth and power.

She has been noted as much for glamour as business acumen. At 49, she is still conspicuously tall and shapely, and is always well dressed. Her favourite designers are Valentino, Carolina Herrera and Jil Sander: Vogue devoted a fashion 'profile' to her in 2004. "Desiree Rogers," it proclaimed, "proves that executive and chic can coexist."

She has now gone straight to the top of Washington's A-list. "Party people in the know breezed past the senators and the television personalities," the New York Times wrote of a party at an art museum, "to hover around a striking, willowy woman with a shimmering Oscar de la Renta dress and an unfamiliar face." The newspaper then described her as a "Chicago corporate executive and civic leader."
 
Ah, Chicago: the lady is another old hand from the Windy City, all over the news these days as political machination and corruption darken the rosy glow of Obama's election victory. The relationship between Obama and Rogers, however, is as revealing of the way things work as the buffoonery of the state governor trying to sell Obama's senate seat, or the jailing of his old financial sponsor, slum landlord Tony Rezko.
 
It began with another Ivy League connection: Michelle Obama's brother Craig Robinson played on the Princeton basketball team with Rogers's now-ex-husband John Rogers, who is the chief executive of a $16bn investment bank, Ariel Capital Management.

They all met in Chicago, where Michelle's father was in politics too. The Rogers settled on Chicago's Gold Coast, and had a daughter. Desiree forged her own career in both business and society: she went through jobs at the telephone giant AT&T, at a local property and restaurant company, the Illinois State Lottery - a job in the gift of the governor - and then as an executive at the Peoples Energy company, supplying natural gas.
 
She sat on the boards of Chicago institutions - resigning from the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art to protest slow progress on "diversity issues". And she threw parties for the players in the city's political machine, most recently a 52nd birthday bash for Obama's mentor, Valerie Jarrett, who he is taking to the White House too.
 
This year, she has given $100,000 to the committee seeking the 2016 Olympics for Chicago, and held $1,000-a-plate fundraisers for Obama. In 2004, she did the same for George Bush, but Obama is enough of a seasoned politician to forgive that.

Last week, Rogers met Michelle for dinner in a Chicago hotel to find out what Obama "had in mind" for his White House. "It was this whole idea of having people feel comfortable," she later told local columnist Lynn Sweet. "And having people be able to develop relations that are really deep."

Washington is hoping that the former Zulu Queen can bring New Orleans zest to the White House after Bush's years of prayers and early bedtimes, and everyone wants to know how to get a ticket to the ball. ·