10 things to know about first Black White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre

Karine Jean-Pierre is the White House press secretary since May 13, 2022. Following the departure of Jen Psaki, she became the first black person to be White House press secretary.

Previously, Jean-Pierre was the senior advisor and national spokeswoman for MoveOn.org and a political analyst for NBC News and MSNBC.

Jean-Pierre was born on August 13, 1977  in Fort-de-France, Martinique. And as a daughter to Haitian parents.

Her mother worked as a home health aide and was active in her Pentecostal church, while her father was a taxi driver.
In her 2019 memoir, Jean-Pierre wrote that she was sexually abused by an older male cousin when she was between the ages of seven and ten.

According to her 2019 memoir, Jean-Pierre attempted suicide when she was in her early twenties.
Jean-Pierre worked as a senior advisor to the Joe Biden 2020 presidential campaign. She joined the Biden team in May 2020.

She is fluent in English, French, and Haitian Creole.

During the Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign, Jean-Pierre was the campaign’s southeast regional political director and was the regional political director for the White House Office of Political Affairs during the Obama administration’s first term.

Karine Jean-Pierre obtained a B.S. from the New York Institute of Technology in 1997. She received her MPA from the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University (SIPA) in 2003, where she served in student government and decided to pursue politics.