Desirée Rogers

New Orleans is the birthplace of Jazz, a major US port city, important in river transshipment, naval logistics, and the illegal drug trade. New Orleans is located at the mouth of the Mississipi River, just south of where the river splits off into Lake Pontchartrain, which forms the northern city... limit and a unique ecosystem because of the salt water boundary. The Pontchartrain Causeway is the longest bridge in the world. New Orleans is unique in the United States for many reasons. It shares more in common with european cities and Montreal than most other American cities, and both historically and liguistically has more in common with other port cities like New York than other cities in the South . The architecture of the Vieux Carre, or French Quarter, mainly comes from the 18th century Spanish period, is reminiscent of many european cities, and changes are tightly controlled. The Garden District contains many stately mansions built in the early 19th century, after the city was purchased by the US. There are two distinct local cuisines, cajun and haute creole. Culturally and economically, since the decline of the local oil industry in the 1970's, the city and the attitude of local residents have more in common with a banana republic or a small caribbean nation than most US cities. Tourism is the major industry, and Mardi Gras is the major holiday.
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John Washington Rogers, Jr. is an investment manager who founded Ariel Capital Management , which is the United States' largest minority-run mutual fund firm, in 1983. He is chairman and CEO of the company. He served as the Board President of the Chicago Park District for six years in the 1990s.... He was captain of the 1979–80 Ivy League co-champion Princeton Tigers men's basketball team. He has performed other service as board member to several prominent companies, as a leader of several organizations affiliated with his collegiate alma mater, and as a leader in youth education in his native Chicago. He has been honored with the Woodrow Wilson Award from Princeton University for the breadth and depth of his service to many organizations. He was active in the 2008 Barack Obama presidential campaign and was a leader of the 2009 Inauguration committee. He has been a regular contributor to Forbes magazine for most of the last decade. Rogers was raised in the Hyde Park community area of Chicago's South Side, and graduated from the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools in 1976.
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