Obama Foundation CEO Valerie Jarrett Made About $771,000 as Rank-and-File Staff Push to Unionize, Fox News Reports
The Obama Foundation paid CEO Valerie Jarrett about $771,000 in total compensation in 2025, while workers at the nonprofit are organizing a union over workloads and benefits, Fox News Digital reported Saturday, citing the Foundation’s most recent tax filing.
About 172 of the 342 employees listed in that filing earned more than $100,000, roughly half the staff, according to Fox News Digital. The Foundation’s payroll and benefits bill reached $50.4 million in 2025, up from $18.5 million in 2018, the outlet reported.
WHAT THE TAX FILINGS SHOW
Jarrett, a longtime adviser to former President Barack Obama, has led the Foundation since 2021. Her salary rose from about $581,000 that year to $740,000 in 2022 and stayed there through 2024, before climbing to nearly $755,000 in 2025, Fox News Digital reported.
The Foundation’s 2024 filing, posted on ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer, confirms the earlier figures: it lists Jarrett at $740,000 in base pay plus $15,862 in other compensation. The same filing lists Robbin Cohen, listed as an executive vice president, at $610,195; Alfreda Bradley-Coar, chief legal and people officer, at $424,769; and Christina Tchen, a former chief of staff to Michelle Obama, at $397,992. For 2024 the Foundation reported about $209.8 million in revenue and about $1.07 billion in net assets.
The 2025 filing, which Fox News Digital reviewed, was not yet posted on Nonprofit Explorer when The Digital Free Press checked Saturday night, so the 2025 figures in this article are Fox News Digital’s. According to that report, Cohen earned about $666,000 in 2025, Tchen about $431,000, and former Obama aides Michael Strautmanis and Laura Lucas Magnuson about $404,000 and $396,000.
Fox News Digital also compared presidential nonprofits: about half of the Obama Foundation’s staff earned over $100,000, versus 37% at the George W. Bush Presidential Center, 29% at the Carter Center and 23% at the Clinton Foundation, based on their latest filings.
THE OBAMA FOUNDATION UNION PUSH
Employees announced on Oct. 7 that they are organizing with AFSCME Council 31, according to the union. The union said it would represent more than 250 people across the Foundation, including at the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago and its Washington offices, and that the announcement came in an open letter signed by 68 employees.
The letter cited “heavy workloads, inadequate benefits, insufficient support from management, and high employee turnover,” according to AFSCME. “We can advocate for a transparent and equitable workplace for everyone at the Obama Foundation, at every level,” the workers wrote. They also quoted Obama’s own 2016 letter: “If I were looking for a good job that lets me build some security for my family, I’d join a union.”
“Amidst increasing workloads we have seen our benefits rolled back and support from leadership to be minimal,” the workers wrote, according to Fox News Digital. AFSCME said employees are signing cards to seek voluntary recognition from management.
WHAT THE FOUNDATION SAYS
The Foundation defended its pay. “The foundation pays our employees rates that are competitive with the market,” Emily Bittner, the Foundation’s vice president of communications, told Fox News Digital, adding that the Foundation now has more than 500 employees worldwide. “The Board of Directors uses comparability data and a compensation consultant to review and approve the compensation of the CEO, officers and key employees on an annual basis,” she said.
On the union, the Foundation told Fox News Digital: “We are deeply committed to the fundamental right of workers to organize and make their voices heard.”
Ohio State accounting professor Brian Mittendorf told Fox News Digital the share of six-figure earners is “clearly a higher percentage than your average nonprofit,” but said the Foundation is “very expertise heavy” and that Jarrett’s pay is “not an unusual amount” for an organization with more than $1 billion in net assets.
Illinois GOP Chairman Bob Grogan told Fox News Digital the Center is “another far-left political operation” that uses “taxpayer dollars to make Barack Obama’s inner circle rich.” The Foundation says construction was privately funded.
Sources: Fox News Digital (Oct. 17, 2026), citing the Obama Foundation’s 2025 tax filing; Barack Obama Foundation Form 990 for 2024, via ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer; AFSCME Council 31 (Oct. 7, 2026). Cover and in-post background: Obama Presidential Center, Chicago, June 2026, by AlphaBeta135 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0 and CC0).
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