This means that 13% of the U.S. population — 23.5 million Black women — who relentlessly pursue the American dream, continue to be overlooked and underpaid. They are robbed of an equal opportunity for prosperity, and plagued by systematic injustice. I know these women. They are my family. They are my neighbors. They are my fellow citizens. So when I became a Senior Advisor to President Obama and Chair of the White House Council on Women and Girls, I was proud to work for a President who took the fight for equal pay as personally as I do. President Obama recognized that millions of Americans grew up in homes like his, with single mothers who relied on food stamps, and grandmothers who shared stories of less-qualified men leapfrogging ahead of them at work. And with pay inequality amounting to $1.2 trillion a year, he knew the cost of ignoring this inequality simply was much too high. He knew that our government, institutions, and employers needed to live up to the ideals upon which this nation was founded.