Ali Campoverdi: Obama Hottie, Feminist Paradox [Field Guide]

[KiRby]

Enough about Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau, 27. Who is his hot young girlfriend, Alejandra Campoverdi, and how did she make her way from a farmworker's family to Maxim magazine to the White House?
And does it say anything about the Millennial Generation's take on feminism that she's happily reconciled reality dating TV with an Ivy League education; lingerie photo spreads with a high-powered political job?
Current gig: Assistant for a deputy chief of staff to the president. Pop-culture translation: Donna from the West Wing.

Hometown: Santa Monica, California.
Hardscrabble family history: "My stepfather... went from a childhood picking grapes in California fields to a degree from Stanford Law School."
Leg up: Before graduating high school in 1998, performed in a performing-arts mentorship program. She likely had designs on nearby Hollywood, judging from her later work.
College: Graduated from USC in 2001 in an early sign she was on a fast track through life.

Reality television: After failing to make it onto the Apprentice, Campoverdi in 2004 took a consolation gig as a contestant on the third season of NBC's "For Love Or Money," a dating competition in which young women vie for a bachelor's affection. (That's her next to the suited fellow, in the beige dress.)
Campoverdi confessed at that start of the season that her "experiences involving other women when it comes to men is never good." A prescient observation.
Viewers didn't care" for the "tomboyish" cntestant, and her date soon dumped her:

Ali: (as Preston eats popcorn and looks bored) "Preston was really into it, too."
Preston (voiceover): "I couldn't wait for it to be over with."
​

Maxim: Also in 2004, \ Campoverdi appeared in the [I]Maxim[/I] magazine photo spread we mentioned yesterday. She told the lad-mag what she was looking for in a mate: "You have to be passionate about something. I don’t care if it’s your job or your hobby or your shoes. Something has to make you tick; something has to make you move."

Movie work:Campoverdi played bit parts as "military arm candy in The Aviator, and a vampire hunted by Keanu Reeves in Constantine," according to Maxim.
Charity work: Somewhere around 2005, Campoverdi joined the Agricultural Worker Health Initiative, a program run by the California Endowment, reportedly the state’s largest private healthcare foundation.
Harvard and Northwestern: By 2007, perhaps tired of showbiz, Campoverdi was enrolled simultaneously in the MBA program at Northwestern University (on scholarship) and in a master's program at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Not only did she dance to Mariachi music at a school event (see brief highlight video below via Guanabee), she also From wrote an article for the Kennedy School student newspaper saying Obama, along with Hillary Clinton, had "miss[ed] the point on immigration once again.... sparr[ing] over the newest ugly incarnation of the immigration debate: driver’s licenses for undocumented workers."
Obama campaign: By this past fall, Campoverdi was working as an intern on Obama's presidential campaign. (Got any stories? We'd love to hear them.)
30 dresses: Campoverdi was clearly excited about the inauguration. Designer Stephanie Verrières told the San Francisco Chronicle that "Alejandra ordered at least 30 pieces." (The paper also reported in the Jan. 18 story that Campoverdi was dating Favreau.)
(Thanks to commenters Uncle_Billy_Slumming, SukeshiFedotenko and DollarBrand for the links they contributed.)
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