White House social secretary Desiree Rogers, who drew fire after an embarrassing security breach allowed party crashers into a state dinner, is leaving her post, an Obama administration official said on Friday.
Rogers, 50, is personally close to first lady Michelle Obama and is part of a group of Chicagoans who came to Washington with President Barack Obama.
Her departure will be among the first from high-profile administration posts since Obama took office in January of last year.
A former Chicago businesswoman in charge of planning White House social events, Rogers was quoted as telling the Chicago Sun-Times she would step down next month, calling it “a good time for me to explore opportunities in the corporate world.”
Rogers came under fire, including calls for her resignation, after Virginia couple Tareq and Michaele Salahi managed, without an invitation, to slip into the November 24 White House state dinner for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
The U.S. Secret Service, the agency responsible for protecting the president and his family, has taken blame for letting the Salahis get past security.
Some Republicans had said Rogers could have prevented the incident by stationing someone from her office at the gate with Secret Service agents.
Obama, who was photographed smiling and shaking hands with Michaele Salahi at the event, said he was angry when he found out the couple had crashed the dinner, calling it a “screw up” he vowed would never happen again. The couple contended in a television interview that they were invited guests.
Rogers, known for her fashion sense, became an instant celebrity on the Washington social scene, posing for a photo spread in Vogue entitled “Life of the Party” that appeared weeks after she took up her new job.
The same month, she sat in the front row at New York City’s fashion week.
Rogers told Sun-Times columnist Lynn Sweet she was departing after achieving a goal of the Obamas of opening up the White House to make it the “people’s house.”
Rogers was quoted as saying it had been “an honor and a privilege to serve this president and first lady, in what has certainly been a historic presidency.”
“When I took on this assignment, we talked about the importance of creating the people’s house. My work was really to create this framework,” Rogers said. “I think I completed that work.”
