Meet Maya And Auma, Sisters To Barack Obama Who Both Have PhDs

Jul 29, 2019

Former President of the United States Barack Obama’s family is one that spreads to multiple continents and numerous cultures. Among his relatives are his two half-sisters, Auma Obama and Maya Soetoro-Ng. 

These two women stand out for their incredible accomplishments in their respective fields, just like their brother Barack.

Barack Obama’s parents met in 1960 at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, where they both attended a Russian language class. Barack’s mother Stanley Ann Dunham is of mainly English descent whilst his father, Barack Obama Senior, was originally from Kenya and reportedly the first African student to attend the university where they met. The two wed in 1961, the same year Barack II was born. According to the BBC, the marriage happened during a time of racial tension in the United States, and thus mixed marriages were not common. 

Obama senior’s marriage to Dunham was his second. In 1954, seven years prior to marrying Stanley, he wed Kezia Aoko in Kenya with who he has two children, Malik and Auma Obama.

In 1964, Dunham filed for a divorce and married a second time. Her second marriage was to an Indonesian businessman called Lolo Soetoro. The couple had one daughter together, Maya Soetero-Ng. Maya was raised and educated in Indonesia. According to the Seattle Times, Barack affectionately calls Maya “Kid”, even well into adulthood. 

Barack, Auma and Maya all grew up in different continents but all share a love for academics and humanitarian efforts that connect them.

Auma was born and raised in Kenya, which she described as having a ‘patriarchal culture’, which made it especially challenging for her to lead the life she dreamed of. In an interview with The Voice of Mondelez International, she said: 

“From my own experience growing up in Kenya, I was exposed to a very patriarchal culture that had a very distinct idea of how girls were perceived and should behave, defining them with little room for self-expression. If you tried to go against the status quo, you were reminded that it was not the thing to do because you were a girl.”

Against all odds, Auma obtained a scholarship and moved to Saarbrücken, Germany for her undergraduate studies in Sociology and German, as per the Goethe Institut. She later attended the University of Heidelberg for her post-graduate studies and Bayreuth for her Doctorate. Following her studies, she worked as a journalist and in adult education in Germany until she moved to Britain in 1996.

In 2006, she filed for a divorce from her British husband Ian Manners and moves to Nairobi and started working for the CARE International aid organization. One of her most noteworthy projects with the organization is her “Sport for Social Change” initiative, which is a network that brought together various organizations from East Africa, Egypt and Bangladesh. The aim of the group is to promote social change and opportunities from young girls through their involvement in sports. 

She also founded to Sauti Kuu Foundation, a foundation that aims to assist young people from predominately rural communities to “to discover the strength of their own voices and the power they have to change their lives positively.” Today, Auma is also an author, motivational speaker and a member of the World Future Council. 

Maya was born and raised in Jakarta, Indonesia. She attended an international high school in Jakarta before moving back to Hawaii with her mother as a teenager, where she then attended the Punahou School in Honolulu. In 1993, she received her B.A. from Barnard College of Columbia University. She went on to obtain two M.A. from the University of New York; One in Second Language Studies and another in Secondary Education. She completed in Ph.D. in Multicultural Education in 2006 at the University of Hawaii.

Following the completion of her doctorate degree, she worked as an assistant professor at the Institute for Teacher Education at the University of Hawaii’s College of Education. According to her biography from her Ceeds for Peace organization website, she taught and developed the curriculum for a public school in New York and also taught at the UH Laboratory High School and La Pietra Hawaii School for Girls throughout her career. 

Today, she is the Director of Community Outreach and Service Learning at the Spark M. Matsunaga Institute for Peace & Conflict Resolution, where she teaches Peace Education, the History of Peace Movements and Leadership for Social Changes. She is the founder of the Ceeds for Peace foundation, which “offers various platforms to teach peacebuilding skills, with the goal of providing the tools and support to raise a generation of peacebuilders.” Maya has expressed her passion for empowering young people for a better future. 

“They understand that they owe the planet something and they know how to steward it,” she told the Seattle Times. “They are inclusive. They cast a net widely and invite more people to the table. They are brave about difference, and they are working to understand our interconnectedness.”

Additionally, Maya is the author of a children’s book called “Ladder to the Moon,” which is a story that shares the wisdom of her late mother to her daughters. 

Barack might have been President of the United States, but his sisters’ resumes are pretty incredible too. What do you think of these two women’s impressive accomplishments? Let us know in the comments - and make sure you pass this along to your friends and family!