[1] Rogers was born on June 16, 1959, in New Orleans, Louisiana[2] to late Roy Glapion and his wife Joyce.

[4] She earned a Bachelor's degree in political science from Wellesley College in 1981[5][6] and got her MBA from Harvard Business School in 1985.

In late 1999, Rogers and three other minority women quit the board of the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art to protest what they regarded as a slow pace on diversity issues.

In April 2006, the Illinois Commerce Commission launched an investigation to determine whether employees falsified safety reports on some of its gas pipes and found some discrepancies.

Rogers determined the extent of the corrosion-testing problems, installed a new training and auditing regimen, and hired quality-control employees to check compliance work.

Rogers initially stayed on as President of Peoples Energy, the gas subsidiaries of the new holding company.

[7][17] Rogers is vice-chairman of the Lincoln Park Zoo and serves on the executive committee of Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry.

Rogers was a major contributor to fund-raisers to help Chicago win its bid to become a finalist for the 2016 Olympics, to which she donated more than US$100,000.

[18] Roger's previous year's income, in a 2009 report, was a $350,000 salary from Allstate Financial, as well as $150,000 in board fees from Equity Residential, a real estate investment trust in which she also held at least $250,000 in stock.

[24] Rogers was in the center of the controversy surrounding Tareq and Michaele Salahi, where the couple was able to enter, uninvited, a November 2009 state dinner hosted by President Obama in honor of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The Secret Service ultimately took the blame for the failure after Democratic-majority members of the House Committee on Homeland Security voted against issuing Rogers a subpoena.