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Utahn recounts sharing job with Obama in New York
Beth Noymer Levine and the candidate, both new college grads in '83, worked together at firm
By Jessica Ravitz
The Salt Lake Tribune
Article Last Updated: 08/27/2008 11:20:35 PM MDT
levine obama
Beth Noymer Levine reunited with Barack Obama in Park City last August. (Beth Noymer Levine)
The story begins in 1983. Duran Duran was all the rage, employees were battling over Wang computer terminals, and Beth Noymer, now Levine - who was trying to dress professionally on $15,000 a year in Manhattan - was working beside a man who may become this country's next president.
"Michelle Obama will be first lady," Levine, of Salt Lake City, said with a smile. "But I will always be first colleague."
She and Barack Obama, both '83 college graduates, landed their first out-of-school jobs at Business International (BI), a research, publishing and consulting firm that served multinational clients and later was acquired by The Economist Group. There they worked on sister publications, shared
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a boss, and researched and wrote about finance and trade issues abroad.
"He was smart, charming, very together and funny," she said. Being his closest colleague, however, was a bit intimidating. He always met deadlines, turned in much-lauded work and, as a result, got the plum assignments.
"I'm sure I was smart and did a good job, but next to him it was hard to shine," she said. "He dialed in and did his work. I was interested in more than my work. . .I was distracted."
It was an "eclectic and quirky" mix of people, she said of BI, which was located near the United Nations in a building that housed, in its basement, one of MTV's first production studios. "The big
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guys in suits" sat upstairs, Levine said, while she, Obama and most of the other 50 to 60 young "ambitious people, who were good writers and probably on their way to somewhere else," worked long hours on the floor below.
One coworker described the place as "'a high school with ashtrays,'" she remembered. But Obama was "more mature. . .even classy then." She described him as "thoughtful" and "serious but not self-important."
She's laughed at some of the queries from NPR, Newsweek and other national reporters who've tracked her down, wanting her to recount conversations they'd shared. "If I had known he was going to be a president of the United States, I would have kept a journal," she said.
In 1985, both Obama and she moved on. The first colleagues didn't keep in touch over the years. First jobs, after all, usually end up "being a blip on a radar screen," said Levine, who now has her own business, SmartMouth Communications, which does speaker and presentation training. But when Obama announced his presidential candidacy in February 2007, Levine jumped on board.
The self-described feminist would have had a hard time not putting her weight behind Hillary Clinton if she hadn't known what she knew about him. She and her husband, Hank, helped host last August Obama's Park City fund-raiser, which she said brought in more than $200,000.
She remembered her 15-year-old son, Nate, who came along, grumbling in boy-teen form, "He's not going to remember you." She stepped up to shake Obama's hand, 24 years after first meeting him, and said, "Barack, Beth Noymer from Business International."
Following a big hug and introductions to her family, Obama looked at Nate and said, "'Do you know how long I've known this young lady?'" Nate's response, as Levine remembered it: "'She's not so young.'"
But even her son left that night impressed, bowled over that several hours and hundreds of people later the candidate remembered his name. Obama sought out the Levines to say goodbye and hug again the woman he'd worked with so long ago. After saying "good luck," she said it hit her: Obama was heading off to make history.
"What are the chances that someone you had a young adult work experience with will go on to be president?" she said. "It's surreal." [email protected]
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