President Obama Invites Podcasting Industry Leader Ana Xavier for An Exclusive Preview of the Obama Presidential Center

Of the millions of people working in podcasting worldwide, exactly one was invited inside the Obama Presidential Center before it opened to the public: Ana Xavier, founder of The Podcast Space.

Xavier traveled to Chicago on May 1, 2026, for an exclusive early visit to the Center, a 19.3-acre campus in Jackson Park that opened June 19, 2026 (Juneteenth) as the first fully digital presidential library in American history. She walked the full campus, recorded inside the Center’s state-of-the-art Media Suite, and joined a small roundtable with President Barack Obama to discuss his hopes for how the space’s recording studio, Museum’s storytelling booth, and public library branch will be used by the surrounding community.

The Obama Foundation selected Xavier specifically because of her work with women, people of color, bilingual creators, and under-represented communities — a focus the Foundation identified as directly aligned with its own mission to inspire, empower, and connect people to change their world.

During the roundtable, President Obama described the philosophy behind the recording facilities: “The power of podcasting is the power of the human voice and the power of stories. The notion that you’ve got a story to tell, you get a microphone, and you record that story. And if it’s a good enough story, you might have somebody in Bangladesh or Munich listening - a very specific story about a very local event that achieves some universal meaning to people and gets them to see something they didn’t see before. That’s not just the source of great art, it’s the source of community, social trust, and ultimately democracy and social cohesion. So we wanted to make sure that we had facilities here where people could tell stories.”

It’s a mission Xavier has lived personally. Portuguese by birth, she began podcasting in Portugal in 2008, produced shows in the United Kingdom, and rebuilt her career again after relocating to the United States in 2016. In January 2020, she founded The Podcast Space, now a multilingual media brand serving podcasters in English, Portuguese, Spanish, and French.

“As a woman in a male-dominated industry, immigrant and non-English native, it was an honor to be granted this opportunity. I’ve spent my whole career leading the way for other women, bilinguals, and under-represented communities about the power of sharing your story - no matter the size of your platform - and to hear that from President Obama himself was extraordinary,” said Xavier.

Full details of Xavier’s visit, including her conversation with President Obama and more details on the newly opened Obama Presidential Center, are available in her article, “Hope Gets a Studio: Inside the Obama Presidential Center’s Vision for Community Storytelling” published on The Podcast Space.

About Ana Xavier

Ana Xavier is a multilingual, award-winning podcast marketing and content strategist and the founder of The Podcast Space. Born and raised in Portugal, she studied Science of Communication: Journalism, PR and Multimedia at University of Porto, she has produced podcasts since 2008 across Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States, where she has lived since 2016. She specializes in generating strategic podcast content and marketing plans for women, multilingual, and minority impact-driven business owners, and has spoken at Podcast Movement, The Podcast Show (London), and Podcasting For Business Conference. Ana has partnered with world-renowned brands such as Riverside, Captivate, Ecamm and Ausha to create educational content. She hosts The Podcast Space. She is also Head of Strategic Growth and Global Audience Engagement for Podcasthon, the only nonprofit event in Podcasting.