Adolfo Carrion was the Bronx Borough President from 2001 to 2009, when he was tapped by Barack Obama to head the newly-created White House Office of Urban Affairs.

A former seventh-grade teacher and assistant pastor at a Bronx church, Carrion joined his community board after getting a degree in urban planning from Hunter College. After spending three years working in the city's planning department, he set his sights on higher office in 1997, winning a campaign to represent Bronx's 14th District in the City Council. In 2001, with Fernando Ferrer term-limited out of the office, Carrion won the job of Bronx Borough President. He was reelected in 2005 and served until February 2009, when he was nominated by Barack Obama to helm the White House Office of Urban Affairs.

Borough presidents have little formal power, but Carrion used the job effectively as a bully pulpit. He butted heads with Mayor Bloomberg (and won) over plans to use state funding for Bronx parks, and helped stop plans to ship thousands of tons of solid waste from Queens to the Bronx. Carrion was also a big cheerleader for a new Yankee Stadium; when the local community board rejected the plan, Carrion replaced many of those who had defied him with folks more friendly to his agenda. Although he was long rumored to be planning a run to replace Bill Thompson as Controller in 2009, he was snapped up by the Obama administration before that could happen. In his new position as director of Urban Affairs, he's been charged with turning the country's most densely populated areas in economic centers by increasing infrastructure and boosting job opportunities—a lofty task to say the least. He was succeeded in 2010 by Derek Douglas and has since served as president of the National Association of Latino Elected Officials and a regional director for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. [Image via Getty, with Army Archerd]