Jake Sullivan

Jacob Jeremiah Sullivan (born November 28, 1976) is an American lawyer who currently serves as the United States national security advisor to President Joe Biden. He was previously director of policy to President Barack Obama, national security advisor to then Vice President Biden and deputy chief of staff to Secretary Hillary Clinton at the U.S. Department of State. Sullivan also served as senior advisor to the U.S. federal government at the Iran nuclear negotiations and senior policy advisor to Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, as well as visiting professor at Yale Law School. On November 23, 2020, President-elect Biden announced that Sullivan would be appointed as national security advisor. He took office January 20, 2021. Sullivan was born in Burlington, Vermont to a family of Irish descent and grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His father worked for the Star Tribune and was a professor at the University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and his mother was a high school guidance counselor. Sullivan attended Southwest High School in Minneapolis, where he graduated in 1994. He was a Coca-Cola Scholar, debate champion, president of the student council, and voted "most likely to succeed" in his class. Sullivan attended Yale University, where he majored in international studies and political science and was awarded the Alpheus Henry Snow Prize. He was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa his senior year and graduated summa cum laude with distinction in 1998 with a bachelor of arts. Sullivan won a Rhodes Scholarship to attend Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied international relations. He was awarded a Marshall Scholarship the same year but turned it down in favor of the Rhodes. While at Oxford, Sullivan served as a managing editor of the Oxford International Review. He graduated with a master of philosophy. He graduated with a juris doctor from Yale Law School in 2003. He is a member, and former board member, of the Truman National Security Project. At Yale, he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal and the Yale Daily News.