ATLANTA: Mrs Michelle Obama brings the skills of a corporate lawyer to the White House as First Lady to President-elect Barack Obama, but she says her priority will be her role as 'mum-in-chief' to the couple's two daughters.

Mrs Obama, 44, not only the first black First Lady but one of the youngest presidential wives since Jackie Kennedy, was a passionate advocate for her husband's candidacy.

Although she admits she happily gives political advice if her husband asks for it, she has played down her influence on her husband in this area.

'My first job, in all honesty, is going to continue to be 'mum-in-chief',' she said recently referring to daughters Malia, 10, and Sasha, seven.

During the campaign, she would give a standard 45 minute stump speech, which she wrote herself and delivered without notes. While other would-be presidential wives traditionally stick to uncontroversial topics, Mrs Obama spoke on education and inequality.

Born Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, she grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood on the south side of Chicago and went to public school.

After winning scholarships to Princeton and Harvard law school, she worked for a law firm and in the Chicago mayor's office. Her most recent job was vice-president of the University of Chicago hospitals, where she earned more than her husband.

She is immensely popular with Democrats who warm to the strength and smartness she projects, but in February she stirred controversy with comments she made on the campaign trail.

'For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country,' she told an audience in Wisconsin. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change.'

Conservatives criticised her as insufficiently patriotic and the dispute angered some black Americans who said they are held to a higher standard of patriotism. Resistance to racial injustice, they said, has often been cast as unpatriotic.

Mrs Obama said during the campaign that she had stopped watching TV, stopped reading opinion polls, and 'developed a thick skin' to cope with the accusations and criticism.

'She's also had fewer public appearances than other potential first ladies because she has two small kids and has to balance her parental responsibilities with the hopes of getting her husband elected,' said Prof Leonard Steinhorn, a professor of political communication at American University in Washington.

'She won't be a wilting flower' when she becomes First Lady, he said, but he agreed she would take care to balance her public image with her private life. --REUTERS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE