Obama's Newest Education Adviser: Shakira

The newest member of the Obama administration is ... Shakira. Yes, the hip-shaking singer will be appointed to a position on the President's Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics because of her education reform activism, the Huffington Post reports. Shakira started a foundation in 1995 to fund schools in Haiti, South Africa, and her native Colombia; she is also a UN Goodwill Ambassador.

"This is a tremendous honor for me," Shakira tells HuffPo. "Latino youth are the fastest-growing group in America, yet more Latino children are living in poverty—6.1 million in 2010—than children of any other racial or ethnic group. As I have seen in my own Foundation work, the only road out of poverty is education." (More Shakira stories.)