Jonathan Finer

Jonathan Finer
Director of Policy Planning
Incumbent
Assumed office March 2016
President	Barack Obama
Preceded by	David McKean
Personal details
Born	Norwich, Vermont, U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Alma mater	Harvard University Balliol College, Oxford Yale University

Jonathan Finer is Chief of Staff and Director of Policy Planning for Secretary John Kerry at the U.S. Department of State.^[1][2]

Education

Finer graduated from high school in Hanover, New Hampshire. He attended Harvard University where he developed an interest in international relations after spending time working for the British Labour Party in the UK.^[1] He has a law degree from Yale, where he co-founded the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project; an M.Phil. in international relations from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. Finer also spent a year in Hong Kong as a Henry Luce Foundation Scholar, working as a reporter and editor at the Far Eastern Economic Review.

Career

Finer was a foreign and national correspondent at the Washington Post, where he reported from more than 20 countries and spent 18 months covering the war in Iraq, embedding with the U.S. Marines during the 2003 invasion and based in Baghdad in 2005-2006. He also covered conflicts in Gaza (2009), Russia/Georgia (2008) and Israel/Lebanon (2006); the 2004 U.S. Presidential campaign; and the 2004 Major League Baseball playoffs.^[1]

Finer joined the Obama Administration in 2009 as a White House Fellow, assigned to the Office of the White House Chief of Staff and the National Security Council Staff. At the White House, he also served as Special Advisor for the Middle East and North Africa and Foreign Policy Speechwriter for Vice President Joseph R. Biden and later as Senior Advisor to Deputy National Security Advisor Antony Blinken.^[1]

Prior to his appointment as Director of Policy Planning at the State Department, Finer previously served as Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy.^[1][2]

References