(left to right in first row)
1. Michelle Obama
2. Menchu de Luna Lopez is a nurse at New York University Hospital who helped save 20 babies when the power went out in the hospital following a power outage from Hurricane Sandy. The superstorm came up early in the speech, as the President directly attributed the devastating storm to global warming.
Second row,
6. Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber
7. Apple CEO Tim Cook was invited by the First Lady and though he was never pointed out by name, his role in the national economy makes him a major player. The biggest allusion to his presence was Mr Obama's reference to the threat posed by cyber attacks.
8. President Obama frequently references his two daughters when talking about equal-pay policies. Tonight, however, he used Amanda McMillan, a woman who has filed a fair-pay suit against her former employers in Mississippi after she was not promoted for a higher paying job
9..Lieutenant Brian Murphy was highlighted specifically by the President in his speech, as Mr Murphy was shot 12 times at an attack at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. In an emotive moment, Mr Obama recalled how, when Mr Murphy was asked how he could survive such an incident, he reportedly said: 'that's just the way we're made'.
10. The President regularly talks in speeches about the American Dream and his unusual journey to the White House. By inviting Avondale, Arizona Mayor Marie Lopez Rogers, the concept is present once more. She was elected as the city’s first Latina mayor in 2006 after being on the city council for 14 years. As a child, she reportedly picked cotton with her parents, and decades later, she is working again on that farmland as it has since been remade into the site of City Hall.
11. One of the first initiatives put forth by the President on Tuesday night was that high schools may begin offering apprenticeship programs so that graduates gain markable skills early on in their education. Bradley Henning, a machinist from Louisville, Kentucky, is one man who benefited from one such program, and the 23-year-old now oversees his own apprentices.
