Eyes turned to Alaska and Japan this past week as the Biden administration saw its first in-person meetings with Japanese and Chinese officials. With names like Blinken, Sullivan, Campbell, and Ratner cited, The Wire put together a resource of the Biden administration officials responsible for helping shape China policy.
The China challenge has come up several times in the first two months of the Biden administration. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan met in Anchorage, Ala., with Chinese officials this week. Ely Ratner, a special assistant to the Secretary of Defense, was assigned to lead the Defense Department’s China Task Force, which is taking four months to design a set of priorities and recommendations on China for Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
During Senate confirmation hearings in recent weeks, many of President Biden’s picks were pressed on China policy. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) attempted to block Gina Raimondo’s confirmation as Commerce Secretary in early February, in part because she declined to commit to keeping Huawei on the U.S. Entity List. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the nominee for U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, was questioned about a speech she gave at a Confucius Institute in 2019. (She called it a “huge mistake.”) Antony Blinken, the President’s nominee for Secretary of State, said the persecution of Uyghurs in China amounted to genocide. And Janet Yellen, the nominee for Treasury Secretary, said that she was prepared to “use the full array of tools to address” some of China’s practices.
Below is a simplified organizational chart highlighting members of the Biden administration that are likely to focus on China. Although the President has not yet filled some key positions, or named a new U.S. Ambassador to China, we have listed 55 high ranking officials.1There are more women than men on the list, and quite a number of Rhodes Scholars and Marshall Scholars; Americans who studied at Oxford University.)
You can click on the image of any official, and automatically drop down to a biographical sketch below. Or you can download the entire chart. The structure does not indicate who each individual reports to directly, but creates a first look at the broader team that will be charged with taking on one of the biggest foreign policy challenges of the Biden administration: how to deal with China’s rise as a strategic and economic rival.
Was anyone left out of this chart, or incorrectly listed? Please contact hannah@thewire.media.
Office of the U.S. Trade Representative
Katherine Tai, U.S. Trade Representative
Tai was the lead advisor on international trade to the chairman and Democratic members of the Ways and Means Committee, moving from the position as trade counsel. Before that, she worked in the USTR’s Office of the General Counsel, time partly spent as the Chief Counsel for China Trade Enforcement. She entered government multiple international trade positions in the D.C. private legal sector, and previously lived and worked in Guangzhou in the late ’90s as a Yale-China fellow. She has a bachelor’s degree from Yale University and a law degree from Harvard Law School.
Nora Todd, Chief of Staff
Before joining USTR, Todd worked as the chief economic advisor for Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), and held various policy positions under Rep. Mike Michaud (D-ME), former Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-CA), and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA). She earned a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and a master’s degree from Georgetown University.
Greta Peisch, General Counsel
Peisch counseled Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) on the Senate Finance Committee on international trade issues from 2015 until her appointment. She previously worked in the USTR office during the Obama administration, clerked for a judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, and worked at law firm Covington & Burling. She has a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College and a law degree from Yale Law School.
Brad Setser, Counselor
Setser was a senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. Before that, he was the Treasury Department’s deputy assistant secretary for international economic analysis under the Obama administration. He also was the director for international economics on the staff of the National Economic Council and the NSC. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, a master’s degree from Sciences Po, and a master’s degree and PhD from Oxford University.
Jamila Thompson, Senior Advisor
Thompson was deputy chief of staff to Rep. John Lewis (D-GA). Prior to that, she was Rep. Barbara Lee’s (D-CA) legislative assistant. Before coming to Capitol Hill in 2001, she was a volunteer coordinator and translator for various nonprofits. She has a bachelor’s degree from Goucher College and a master’s degree from University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.
Mark Wu, Senior Advisor
Wu is on leave from his work as a dean and tenured professor at Harvard Law School, researching international trade and international economic law. He’s affiliated with several Harvard centers, including some that cover China and East Asia. He serves on the WTO’s advisory board, and previously served on the WEF’s Global Futures Council for Trade and Investment. He was previously the USTR’s director for intellectual property. In the private sector, he consulted at McKinsey and worked at the World Bank in China. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, a master’s degree from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, and a law degree from Yale Law School.
National Economic Council
Brian Deese, National Economic Council Director
Deese moves into this role from investment management company BlackRock, where he was the global head of sustainable investing. He previously worked in the Obama administration as an assistant to the president and senior advisor focused on climate and energy policy, and as a deputy director at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). He also served as a deputy director at the NEC. He has also been affiliated with the Center for American Progress and the Center for Global Development. Deese earned a bachelor’s degree at Middlebury College and a law degree from Yale Law School.
David Kamin, Deputy Director of the National Economic Council
Kamin comes to the NEC from his position as a professor at the New York University School of Law. He worked under President Obama as a special assistant to the president for economic policy and, before that, as a special assistant and adviser to the director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB). He earned a bachelor’s degree from Swarthmore College and a law degree from NYU.
Daleep Singh, Deputy Director of the National Economic Council & Deputy National Security Advisor
Singh worked on international affairs at the Treasury Department during the Obama administration, specializing in financial markets and international affairs. He later joined the Federal Reserve Bank as head of the markets group and served as chief U.S. economist at the investment firm SPX Capital. Before working in the government, he was employed by Goldman Sachs and Element Capital Management. He has served as an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and the Atlantic Council, and as an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Duke University and an MBA/MPA from MIT and Harvard University.
Special Presidential Envoy for Climate
John Kerry, Special Presidential Envoy for Climate
Kerry served as Secretary of State during President Obama’s second term. More recently, he was the visiting distinguished statesman at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. For nearly two decades, he served as a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts and during President Obama’s first term chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He served in the Navy during the Vietnam War. In 2004, he was the Democratic Party’s nominee for President. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Yale University and a law degree from Boston College Law School.
National Security Council
Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor
Sullivan was most recently a nonresident senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. During the Obama administration, he was then Vice President Biden’s national security advisor, directed policy planning at the State Department, and served as Hillary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff when she was Secretary of State. He worked on Clinton’s presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2016, and President Obama’s general election campaign in 2008. Previously, he was a senior policy advisor and chief counsel to Senator Amy Klobuchar’s (D-MN), clerked for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, and, in the private sector, worked at a Minneapolis law firm. He has a bachelor’s and a law degree from Yale University and earned a master’s degree from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.
Jonathan Finer, Deputy National Security Advisor
During the Obama administration, Finer was the chief of staff and director of policy planning for the Secretary of State, and worked in the National Security Council and the Office of the White House Chief of Staff. Before that he served as a foreign policy speechwriter for then-Vice President Biden and as a senior advisor to deputy national security advisor Antony Blinken. He has more recently worked as the head of political risk and public policy at investment firm Warburg Pincus and as an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Prior to entering government, Finer was a Hong Kong based journalist. He also covered conflicts in Iraq, Gaza, Georgia, and Lebanon for The Washington Post. He has a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, a law degree from Yale Law School, and an M.Phil from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.
Anne Neuberger, Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technology
Neuberger was most recently the National Security Agency’s (NSA) director of cybersecurity and has occupied other top roles in the NSA, working in areas such as election security, foreign intelligence, and cybersecurity operations. She was also the Navy’s deputy chief management officer and a White House fellow. In the private sector, she was an executive at American Stock Transfer & Trust Company (AST). She has a bachelor’s degree from Touro College and an MBA and master’s degree from Columbia University.
Kurt Campbell, Indo-Pacific Coordinator
Campbell was the assistant secretary of state for east Asian and Pacific affairs during President Obama’s first term. He also was once deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asia and the Pacific at the Pentagon, a director on the NSC Staff, deputy special counselor to the president for NAFTA, and a White House fellow at the Treasury Department. He co-founded the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), co-founded the Asia Group, founded StratAsia, was the director at the Aspen Strategy Group and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the U.S. Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific. He has a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, San Diego, a certificate from the University of Erevan in Soviet Armenia, and earned a doctorate from Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar.
Cara Abercrombie, Senior Director for Global Health Security and Biodefense
Abercrombie worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for more than 15 years in roles such as the principal director for east Asia policy, special assistant to the Secretary of Defense, and the director for south Asia. She most recently worked as the acting deputy director at the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), the Department of Defense’s agency that works on programs such as foreign military financing and training and foreign disaster assistance. After the Obama administration, she served as a visiting fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Before entering government, Abercrombie worked with the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs to support civil society and political party development in Eurasia. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College and a master’s degree from Princeton University.
Beth Cameron, Senior Director for Global Health Security and Biodefense
Cameron previously occupied the same role during the Obama administration. She has also worked as the Nuclear Threat Initiative’s vice president for global biological policy and programs, oversaw expansion of the State Department’s Global Threat Reduction initiative, was a fellow in the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s (D-MA) health policy office, and managed policy research for the American Cancer Society. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia and a PhD from Johns Hopkins University.
Tarun Chhabra, Senior Director for Technology and National Security
Chhabra co-directed the Brookings Institution’s Global China initiative and was a senior fellow at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET). He served on President Obama’s National Security Council staff as the director for strategic planning and director for human rights and national security issues. He worked under the Secretary of Defense and the United Nations Secretary General. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University, a law degree from Harvard Law School, and an M.Phil. from Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar.
Rush Doshi, China Director
Doshi was most recently the director of Brookings Institution’s China Strategy Initiative. He was a fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center and an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). His research focused on China’s grand strategy as well as Indo-Pacific security issues. He worked on Asia policy for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. He has a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and a PhD from Harvard University.
Julian Gewirtz, China Director
Gewirtz was a fellow at Columbia University’s China & The World program, a special advisor for international affairs at the U.S. Department of Energy, and a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. Gewirtz earned his B.A. in history summa cum laude from Harvard, and a doctorate from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He is also the author of Unlikely Partners: Chinese Reformers, Western Economists, and the Making of Global China (Harvard University Press).
Peter Harrell, Senior Director for International Economics and Competitiveness
Harrell was the deputy assistant secretary for counter threat finance and sanctions in the State Department’s Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs during President Obama’s second term, and served on the State Department’s policy planning staff with a focus on Asia. He has since been an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a global order visiting fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House. Harrell served on Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and was previously a reporter for Congressional Quarterly. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and a law degree from Yale Law School.
Shanthi Kalathil, Democracy and Human Rights Coordinator
Kalathil was most recently the senior director of the National Endowment for Democracy’s International Forum for Democratic Studies. She was previously a fellow at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), an associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and a consultant for the World Bank. Early in her career, she was a reporter based in Hong Kong and wrote for The Wall Street Journal. She earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley and a master’s degree from the London School of Economics.
Laura Rosenberger, Senior Director for China
Rosenberger was the NSC director for China and Korea during the Obama administration. She held several positions at the State Department, often working on the Asia-Pacific and arms control, and with the White House’s National Security Council (NSC), including as chief of staff and senior advisor to Antony Blinken. She has also worked as the director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy and as a senior fellow at The German Marshall Fund. Rosenberger was a foreign policy advisor to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Penn State University and a master’s degree from American University.
Michael Sulmeyer, Senior Director for Cyber
Sulmeyer was most recently the cyber project director for Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School. He also worked under the Secretary of Defense as the director for plans and operations for cyber policy. He earned a bachelor’s and law degrees from Stanford University, his master’s degree from King’s College London, and a doctorate from Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar.
Office of the Director of National Intelligence
Avril Haines, Director of National Intelligence
Haines was a principal deputy National Security Advisor during the Obama administration, and had previously served as the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and as a legal advisor to the National Security Council (NSC). She has more recently held a senior research position at Columbia University and fellowships at the Brookings Institution and Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. She earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago and a law degree from Georgetown University.
Department of Commerce
Gina Raimondo, Secretary of Commerce
Raimondo is moving into the Commerce Department from her post as the governor of Rhode Island. She was previously Rhode Island’s general treasurer. She founded venture capital firms in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, a master’s degree and doctorate from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, and a law degree from Yale Law School.
Mike Harney, Chief of Staff
Harney left his position as chief of staff to Sen. Mark Warner’s (D-VA) to join the Department of Commerce. He was the assistant U.S. trade representative for congressional affairs during President Obama’s second term, working on negotiations such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He also previously worked as chief of staff to former Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC).
Matthew Borman, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Administration
Borman recently served as acting chief of the enforcement and litigation division of the Office of Chief Counsel for Export Administration. He has worked at the Department of Commerce since 1992, where he began as an attorney in the Office of Chief Counsel for Export Administration. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University‚ a master’s degree from Northeastern University‚ and a law degree from NYU.
Diane Farrell, Acting Under Secretary for International Trade
Farrell was the Commerce Department’s deputy assistant secretary for Asia before moving into her new role. She previously worked on the U.S. India Business Council (USIBC), served on the board of directors at the Export Import Bank of the United States (U.S. Exim Bank), and she was a member of the White House Business Council. She has also held positions in Connecticut’s local government. She has a bachelor’s degree from Wheaton College.
Cara Morrow, International Trade Association’s Director of Policy
Morrow comes to the Commerce Department from Facebook, where she briefly worked on its e-commerce policy team. Before that, she spent two decades in government at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and the Department of Commerce, working on trade policy and with the World Trade Organization (WTO). She has a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Davis and a master’s degree from Middlebury College.
State Department
Antony Blinken, Secretary of State
Blinken was the deputy secretary of state during President Obama’s second term. He has occupied several national security and foreign relations roles in the executive and legislative branches, including: then Vice President Biden’s National Security Advisor during President Obama’s first term; Democratic staff director for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and a staff member in President Clinton’s National Security Council. Following his government service, he co-founded a consulting firm WestExec Advisors and worked as the managing director of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and his law degree from Columbia Law School.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. Ambassador to the UN
Thomas-Greenfield moves into the ambassadorship from her previous position as the Department of State’s assistant secretary for the Bureau of African Affairs. She previously worked as an ambassador to Liberia and has been posted in several countries. She served as director general of the foreign service and as the State Department’s director of human resources. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Louisiana State University and a master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin.
Suzy George, Chief of Staff
George was the chief of staff on the National Security Council under President Obama. Before that, she worked at the State Department, most prominently as Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s deputy chief of staff during President Clinton’s second term. She was also a co-founder and principal with strategy firm Albright Stonebridge Group and in the 1990s worked at the Office of the U.S. Representative to the United Nations and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. For the past three years, George served as chief operating officer for the One Campaign, a global advocacy organization fighting extreme poverty. She has a bachelor’s degree from Mount Holyoke and a law degree from George Washington University.
Wendy Sherman, Deputy Secretary of State
Sherman was the undersecretary of state for political affairs during the Obama administration. She has since directed Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership and served as a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. She was a founding partner with the international strategic advisory firm Albright Stonebridge Group. She additionally has affiliations with the Atlantic Council, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Aspen Strategy Group. Previous government work includes serving under Secretaries of State Madeliene Albright and Warren Christopher, as well as advising President Clinton and coordinating policy on North Korea. She worked as Maryland’s director for child welfare and did campaign work for several years before moving into international and political affairs. She has a bachelor’s degree from Boston University and a master’s degree from the University of Maryland.
Jonathan Fritz, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for China, Mongolia, and Taiwan Coordination
Fritz worked in the State Department’s Office of International Communications & Information Policy, at the the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, and in the U.S. embassies in Canberra and Kabul. He previously held positions at the State Department and in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. He began his foreign service career with consular tours in China and Ecuador. He earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from Stanford University.
Melanie Hart, China Policy Coordinator serving the Undersecretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment
Hart worked at the Center for American Progress as its director of China policy. She previously consulted for the Aspen Institute and the University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. Hart also worked on Qualcomm’s China business development team and has worked as a China advisor for the Scowcroft Group and the Albright Stonebridge Group. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Texas A&M University and a PhD from the University of California, San Diego.
Mira Rapp-Hooper, Senior Advisor on China in the Office of Policy Planning
Rapp-Hooper has been a fellow or senior fellow at the Center on Foreign Relations, with a focus on Asia studies, at Yale’s Paul Tsai China Center, at CNAS, and at the Asia program of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. She was the Asia policy coordinator for the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. She has a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University, and a master’s degree, M.Phil., and PhD from Columbia University.
Sung Kim, Acting Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs
Kim was most recently the U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia, a role he assumed in October 2020. Kim was an ambassador to the Philippines, a special representative for North Korea policy, deputy assistant secretary for Korea and Japan, and the ambassador to South Korea. In addition to more overseas assignments, including time in Hong Kong, he directed the Office of Korean Affairs, as a desk officer in the Office of Chinese Affairs, and as staff assistant in the Bureau of East Asia and Pacific Affairs. Prior to joining the foreign service, he worked as a public prosecutor in Los Angeles. He has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania, a law degree from Loyola University, and a master of laws degree from the London School of Economics.
Ellison Laskowski, Staff Member at the Office of Policy Planning
Laskowski was most recently a senior fellow in the Asia program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. She previously worked in several positions at the State Department with a focus on Europe, advised the special representative for North Korea and worked at the Justice Department. She was stationed in Taipei as a foreign services officer. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Wake Forest University and a master’s degree from Georgetown University.
Natalia Cote-Muñoz, Special Assistant at the Office of Policy Planning
Cote-Muñoz was a research associate for Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. She was a Princeton in Asia Fellow at China Foreign Affairs University and has worked at organizations such as the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy and the Council on Hemispheric Affairs. She lived in Beijing for four years. She has a bachelor’s degree from Swarthmore College and a master’s degree from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
Jung Pak, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs
Pak was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and previously worked in senior positions at the Central Intelligence Agency, with a focus on Korea in both positions. She served as the deputy national intelligence officer for Korea at the National Intelligence Council. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Colgate University and a PhD from Columbia University.
Jeffrey Prescott, Deputy to the U.S. Ambassador to the UN
Prescott previously served as Biden’s senior Asia advisor during the Obama administration, and as a senior director for Iran, Iraq, Syria, and the Persian Gulf states on Obama’s National Security Council. He has worked as a senior fellow at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement and as the executive director of National Security Action. He has a bachelor’s degree from Boston University and a law degree from Yale.
Jennifer Hendrixson White, UN Senior Policy Advisor on Indo-Pacific Issues
Hendrixson White is the principal adviser to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs’ Ranking Member about East Asia and the Pacific. She previously coordinated U.S.-China Strategic & Economic Dialogue at the State Department, and held positions at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, the East Asia Summit, and the ASEAN. Before that, she worked on human security issues in China, Burma, and Thailand. She has a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Davis and a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University.
Department of Treasury
Janet Yellen, Secretary of Treasury
Yellen was appointed as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and later the Chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, by President Clinton. She served as President of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco through the 2008 financial crisis, then the Vice Chair and ultimately the Chair of the Federal Reserve until 2018. An economist by training, she is professor emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Brown University and a PhD from Yale University.
Didem Nisanci, Chief of Staff
Nisanci was the global head of public policy at Bloomberg L.P until her appointment. She was the Securities and Exchange Commission’s chief of staff during the Obama administration. She’s also worked with the Financial Stability Board, at the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance and Investment, and the Treasury Department. She has a bachelor’s degree from Smith College.
Wally Adeyemo, Deputy Treasury Secretary
Adeyemo was the Treasury Department’s deputy executive secretary during President Obama’s first term. He then moved to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to serve as chief of staff to Elizabeth Warren, who was establishing the bureau and had not yet been elected to the Senate. Adeyemo later worked at BlackRock as the chief executive’s senior adviser and interim chief of staff, and then as the president of the Obama Foundation. He has a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley and a law degree from Yale University.
Elizabeth Rosenberg, Counselor to the Deputy Treasury Secretary
Rosenberg served as a senior advisor at the Treasury Department with a focus on financial crimes and terrorism during President Obama’s first term. More recently, she was the director of CNAS’s Energy, Economics, and Security Program. Before entering government work, she was an energy policy correspondent at Argus Media. She has a bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College and a master’s degree from New York University.
Department of Defense
Lloyd Austin, Secretary of Defense
Austin retired from the Army as a four-star general in 2016, last serving as the Commander of U.S. Central Command. He also served as director of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon during a career that spanned four decades. Following his retirement, he founded a consulting firm called Austin Strategy Group. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the U.S. Military Academy (USMA) at West Point, a master’s degree from Auburn University, and a master’s degree from Webster University.
Kelly Magsamen, Chief of Staff
Magsamen most recently worked as the vice president for national security and international policy at the Center for American Progress. She has worked across the National Security Council (NSC), State Department, and the Department of Defense since 2005. She worked on Middle East policy before shifting to the Indo-Pacific and finally serving as the principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific security affairs during President Obama’s second term. She has a bachelor’s degree from American University and a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University.
Kathleen Hicks, Deputy Secretary of Defense
Hicks has occupied several high-level positions at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and in the Department of Defense related to national security policy. During the Obama administration, Hicks served as the principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy and helped lead the development of the 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Mount Holyoke College, an MPA from the University of Maryland, and a PhD from MIT.
Ely Ratner, Special Assistant
Ratner was a deputy national security advisor to Biden during his vice presidency. Ratner was also a senior fellow in China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, and, in government, worked in the State Department’s office of Chinese and Mongolian affairs and as a professional staff member on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He is the former executive vice president and director of studies at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). He earned a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.
Michael Chase, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for China
Chase was most recently a senior political scientist at RAND. He was previously a professor at Johns Hopkins University and the U.S. Naval War College (NWC) in Newport, Rhode Island, and a research analyst at Defense Group Inc. He has a bachelor’s degree from Brandeis University and a PhD and master’s degree from the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
Amanda Dory, Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
Dory worked for the Secretary of Defense during the Obama administration, with a focus on policy planning and African affairs. After Obama’s second term, she taught at the National War College. She’s a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She has a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University and a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University.
Lindsey Ford, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and South East Asia
Ford has worked on and studied U.S. defense strategy in the Asia-Pacific at the Department of Defense, the Brookings Institution, and the Asia Society Policy Institute. She was also a researcher for the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) and consulted for several organizations. She received her bachelor’s degree from Samford University and her master’s degree from the University of Texas, Austin.
David Helvey, Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs
Helvey has worked in the Indo-Pacific Security Affairs office since 2017. He previously worked on China and East Asia Policy at the Defense Department during the Obama administration, and served as a visiting fellow at the National Defense University’s Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs from 2015 to 2016. He has a bachelor’s degree from West Virginia University and a master’s degree from American University.
Veronica Valdez, Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs
Valdez served as a policy advisor for the Port of Seattle. In her previous government work, she was the deputy chief of staff to the Secretary of the Air Force, in part advising on Asia-Pacific policy, and the Asia-Pacific policy advisor to the Secretary of the Navy. She was also a fellow at the Truman National Security Project. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Ohio State University and a master’s degree from the University of California, San Diego.
Hannah Reale is a staff writer with The Wire. Previously, she reported for the GBH News Center for Investigative Reporting, The West Side Rag, and her college newspaper, The Wesleyan Argus. @hannahereale