Tina Chen joins the Obama Foundation as Director of Strategy and Impact

After a tumultuous tenure at the helm of Time’s Up, Tina Chen met with Obama.

The former Obama administration official joined the Obama Foundation as Executive Vice President and Director of Strategy and Impact. Her work includes overseeing the Girls Opportunity Alliance education program, for which she served as a senior advisor last year.

Tchen, a former partner in the Skadden Arps Chicago office and an active member of several city councils, served eight years in the Obama White House, starting as the first director of the White House Office of Public Engagement before becoming the first. Mrs. Chief of Staff. She also led the White House Council on Women and Girls as the president’s two-term executive director.

In January 2018, in the wake of the growing #MeToo movement, which revealed allegations of sexual harassment and assault by Harvey Weinstein and other powerful Hollywood actors, leaders in the women’s entertainment industry formed Time’s Up to fight gender inequality, gender and bad behavior. The nonprofit’s first president and CEO, Lisa Borders, resigned in February 2019 after her son was accused of sexual harassment, and Chen, who co-founded the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, was named the new director of Time’s Up Legal Defense. Fund in October of that year. organization.

But since last August the Washington post After revealing details of the communications that Chen and other Time’s Up executives had with Andrew Cuomo and his team to advise the then-Governor of New York on how to respond to the sexual harassment allegations against him, Chen also resigned.

In response to a Time’s Up request for direct comment on Tina’s story, an Obama Foundation spokesperson released the following statement: “Tina has spent her career fighting for positive change for women. Her life’s work was aimed at achieving fair, just and safe workplaces for women. She believes her work is not done on behalf of women and has much more to offer. The Foundation can benefit from her experience and he will work to ensure the Foundation remains focused on its strategic mission.”