PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA'S TRANSITION TEAM

Barack Obama's official transition team will be overseen by John Podesta, Valerie Jarrett, and Pete Rouse.

John Podesta

Having served as Chief of Staff in the Clinton Administration, John Podesta is now leading the transition planning for the Obama campaign. In his former position with Bill Clinton, he was directing all policy development, daily operations, Congressional relations, and staff activities of the White House. John Podesta is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank he founded in 2003 with financial support from George Soros and others. He also serves as Visiting Professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, and has experience on Capitol Hill, previously working with Senators Tom Daschle of Nebraska and Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont.

Mr. Podesta, who remained close to the Clintons during the Bush administration, is known for his utter discipline and Washington experience. In an appearance on Fox News, Podesta pointed out that Obama’s intention is to build a Cabinet that is diverse, reaching out to Republicans and independents and reflecting the broad coalition that backed Obama during the campaign. According to the BBC, Mr. Podesta does not intend to join the administration once the transition is complete and plans on remaining at the Center for American Progress.

Peter Rouse

Pete Rouse has been working on Capitol Hill for over 30 years and has often been called the 101st Senator due to his "innate knowledge of the workings of Washington," according to the Washington Post. After working as Chief of Staff for Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle, Rouse planned to retire when Daschle was not re-elected in 2004. However, after much aggressive recruiting, he was persuaded to come on as Chief of Staff for newly elected Senator Obama. Thanks to his experience on the Hill, Rouse expertly guided Obama through his first years in Washington, shaping a bi-partisan record for Obama which would help pave the way for a presidential bid. During the campaign, Rouse served as a senior advisor to Mr. Obama and towards the end took on the role of liason between the campaign and the transition. After Obama won the Presidential election, Rouse was officially appointed co-chairman of the Obama-Biden Transition Project. He will also serve in the White House administration as a senior advisor to President Obama.

Valerie Jarrett

A fixture in Chicago politics, Valerie Jarrett first met the Obamas in 1991 when she was chief of staff to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and she interviewed Michelle for a job in City Hall. Jarrett, a lawyer, began in city government as a deputy corporation counsel for finance and development. After her stint with Mayor Daley, Jarrett was a commissioner in the city’s Planning and Development Department and then the chair of the Chicago Transit Board. Currently, she is a member of the University of Chicago’s board of trustees, chairing its medical board, and vice chair of Chicago’s bid for the Summer Olympics in 2016. As a result of her long-standing friendship with the Obama’s, in the campaign she is an unpaid senior advisor, a confidant to both Michelle and Barack. Days after winning the election, President-elect Barack Obama named Jarrett as co-chairman of the Obama-Biden Transition Team. According to a Washington Post report on November 9, Obama favors Jarrett for his Illinois Senate seat. After January 20th, she will become a part of the new administration as a senior White House advisor and as an assistant to the President for intergovernmental relations.

Advisory Board for the Transition

Carol Browner, William Daley, Christopher Edley, Michael Froman, Julius Genachowski, Donald Gips, Governor Janet Napolitano, Federico Peña, Susan Rice, Sonal Shah, Mark Gitenstein, Ted Kaufman.

Transition Senior Staff, supervising the day-to-day activities:

Executive Director: Chris Lu
Chief Spokesperson: Stephanie Cutter
Communications Director: Dan Pfeiffer
General Counsel: Cassandra Butts
Personnel Director: Jim Messina
Associate Personnel Director: Patrick Gaspard
Personnel Counsel: Christine Varney
Co-Director of Agency Review: Melody Barnes and Lisa Brown
Director of Congressional Relations:  Phil Schiliro
Director of Public Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs: Michael Strautmanis
Director of Operations: Katy Kale and Brad Kiley

OBAMA-BIDEN ADMINISTRATION

Cabinet

Steven Chu - Secretary of Energy

Steven Chu, who shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics, will serve as Energy Secretary in the new administration. After receiving his PhD at University of California, Berkley, Chu, the son of highly educated Chinese immigrants, worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories where he completed his Nobel Prize-winning work on the "development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light." A professor of physics at Stanford University from 1987 to 2004, Chu chaired the university’s physics department during two different terms. Since 2004, Chu has been directing the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory, a Lab owned by the Energy Department but operated under contract by the University of California, which he steered towards research on biofuels and solar energy. In an interview with Washington Post, Chu said he turned his attention to energy and climate change because he was "getting increasingly alarmed" about these issues. Chu is in favor of a cap-and-trade approach to limiting greenhouse gases and supports fiscal and regulatory policies to promote technological innovation and energy efficiency. As head of the Department of Energy, Chu inherits an agency whose budget is devoted in large parts to national security, dealing with nuclear waste and materials from deactivated nuclear weapons and naval reactors.

Hillary Clinton - Secretary of State

Following a strong race in a polarizing Democratic Party nomination battle, Hillary Clinton's appointment as secretary of state will exchange her former position of bitter rival for that of partner. A two-term senator from New York, elected in 2000 and re-elected in 2006, and a former first lady, Hillary Clinton will represent a public face to the world for Obama's administration and be one of the most influential players on the international stage. Having visited more than 80 countries as first lady, Mrs. Clinton has had broad exposure to U.S. foreign policy and was called a "naturally gifted diplomat" by Warren Christopher, who served as secretary of state in her husband's administration. The president-elect pointed out that Mrs. Clinton's celebrity and credibility will be an invaluable asset for reengaging the United States with its allies. "She is an American of tremendous stature who will have my complete confidence, who knows many of the world's leaders, who will command respect in every capital, and who will clearly have the ability to advance our interests around the world," Obama said on December 1, announcing his national security team. Mrs. Clinton's appointment, however, could disappoint many of the president-elect's supporters for whom Mr. Obama's presidency symbolized change and who fear former President Bill Clinton could become a back-seat driver.

Shaun Donovan - Secretary of Housing and Urban Development

Shaun Donovan will serve as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in Obama's cabinet, a post in which he will play a crucial role in staving off foreclosures and expanding homeownership. Donovan has broad experience with critical housing issues and is widely respected in housing policy circles, in part due to his stint in New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development where he has been in charge of the nation’s largest housing plan, aimed at creating 165,000 affordable units by 2013. Holding Masters degrees in Public Administration and Architecture from Harvard University, Donovan served in various roles in the public and private sectors and in academia. Prior to working for New York Mayor Bloomberg’s administration, Donovan was a manager at Prudential Mortgage Capital Company and was responsible for Federal Housing Administration lending and affordable housing investments. Donovan also was a visiting scholar at New York University, where he researched and wrote on the preservation of federally assisted housing. Having served in the Clinton Administration as deputy assistant secretary for multifamily housing at HUD, Donovan is familiar with the inner functions of the agency he will be heading. Donovan, who took a leave of absence from his job with the New York City administration, worked most recently as an Obama campaign adviser.

Arne Duncan - Secretary of Education

Arne Duncan, Chief Executive Officer of the Chicago Public Schools, was chosen by President-Elect Barack Obama to be Secretary of Education. During his seven-year tenure heading the nation's third-largest school system, Duncan was confronted with the pressing issues of public education and took tough steps to improve the Chicago schools in the realms of test scores, attendance, and graduation rates. Duncan, a strong advocate of early childhood education, helped draft Obama’s extensive education platform but has no formal teaching experience in the higher-education landscape. Barack Obama and Duncan, who was a co-captain of the basketball team at Harvard, met through Michelle Obama’s brother and used to play pickup basketball games together in Chicago. The Chicago schools superintendent played professional basketball in Australia for four years, and at the time also worked with children who were wards of the state. While studying sociology at Harvard, Duncan took a year off to tutor Chicago children. From 1991 to 1998, Duncan directed the Ariel Education Initiative, which seeks to create better schooling opportunities for inner-city children on Chicago’s South Side, and later served as a director of magnet schools and as Deputy Chief of Staff to the Chicago schools chief Paul G. Vallas before becoming Chief Executive Officer of the Chicago Public Schools.

Robert M. Gates - Secretary of Defense

Currently Secretary of Defense under Bush since 2006, Robert Gates will keep his post in the new administration and has been the first Republican named to President-elect Obama's Cabinet. Gates has worked for the CIA and NSC for the past 26 years and was the Director of Central Intelligence under the first President Bush. Following the terrorist tacks on September 11, 2001, Gates was selected to be the inaugural Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, but he turned down the appointment in favor of remaining President of Texas A&M University. In 2005 Gates once again declined an appointment, this time for the newly created position of Director of National Intelligence. Shortly after being confirmed Secretary of Defense, Gates made headlines by firing the Secretary of the Army and the Army Surgeon General following a Washington Post investigation revealing soldier neglect at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in DC. He also announced the resignations of the Secretary of the Air Force and the Air Force Chief of Staff in June 2008 following nuclear weapons misshipments. In November 2007, Gates spoke out and advocated for more focus on diplomacy and international development and funding for the State Department, an unusual step for the head of the Pentagon.

Timoth Geithner - Secretary of the Treasury

Geithner has spent the last five years as President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, making him the vice chairman and a permanent member of the Federal Open Market Committee.  He previously served in the Department of Treasury from 1988 to 2001, rising to the position of Undersecretary of the Treasury for International Affairs from 1999 to 2001.  After leaving the Treasury, he served as director of the Policy Development and Review Department of the International Monetary Fund until moving to the Federal Reserve Bank in 2003.  Geithner received his bachelor's degree in government and Asian studies from Dartmouth in 1983 and his master's in International Economics and East Asian Studies from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in 1985.  He was born on August 18, 1961 in Brooklyn, New York.  He and his wife Carolyn have two children.

Eric Holder - Attorney General

A former US Attorney for the District of Columbia as well as a federal judge, Eric Holder will become the first African-American attorney general when President-elect Obama moves into the White House. During the Clinton administration Holder was the deputy attorney general under Janet Reno. At the end of the administration, Holder was responsible with vetting Clinton's potential recipients of pardons. Since then, Holder has been working for the last six years as a corporate litigator and white-collar defense attorney for DC law firm Covington & Burling. In 2006 Mr. Holder was hired by the National Football League to investigate Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick's involvement in illegal dogfighting. Eric Holder joined the Obama campaign in August of 2007, and was one of three people, including Caroline Kennedy, involved in selecting and vetting Obama's vice-presidential candidates.

Ray LaHood - Secretary of Transportation

Ray LaHood, Republican congressman from Illinois, was nominated by President-elect Barack Obama to become the secretary of transportation.  He is the second Republican to be named to the cabinet; following Robert M. Gates, who has been selected as the defense secretary. LaHood has spent the last 13 years serving in the House of Representatives, representing Illinois’ 18th District.  He was a strong supporter of Senator John McCain in the presidential race, but is considered a moderate Republican who is known for his bipartisanship. He worked closely with Obama on the House Appropriations Committee, representing the Illinois delegation. He began his career as a junior high school teacher in Catholic and public schools. He served as the District Administrative Assistant for Congressman Tom Railsback and as chief planner for the Bi-State Metropolitan Planning Commission. As the head of the U.S Department of Transportation, it will be his responsibility to oversee the roads, railways, and airways to ensure a safe and efficient transportation system.  He was born on December 6th, 1945 in Peoria, Illinois. LaHood is Lebanese American, one of the few U.S representatives of Arab ancestry. He is on the National Advisory Board for Arab American National Museum, a museum devoted to Arab American history and culture.

Janet Napolitano - Secretary of the Homeland Security

Currently the governor of Arizona, Janet Napolitano has held this office since 2002, becoming the first female Arizona governor to ever win re-election. Previously, she was appointed US Attorney to Arizona by President Clinton in 1993 and was elected Arizona's Attorney General in 1998. Since becoming governor she has been named multiple times as a possible future presidential candidate. In 2005 Time named her one of the five best governors in the US and during the 2004 presidential campaign it was rumored that she might be chosen as Sen. John Kerry's running mate. Napolitano is currently a member of the Democratic Governors Association Executive Committee and from 2006-2007 she was the Chair of the National Governors Association, becoming the first female governor and Arizona governor to ever hold that position. She endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for President in January 2008 and has been nominated Secretary of Homeland Security in the new administration.

Ken Salazar - Secretary of the Interior

Senator Ken Salazar, a Colorado Democrat, will serve as secretary of the interior in Obama's cabinet. As the state's attorney general in Colorado from 1999 to 2004, Salazar worked closely with Republicans and was able to attract bipartisan support, which helped him to be elected as Senator in 2004. Salazar practiced water and environmental law in the private sector for eleven years. He also served as chief legal counsel for Governor Roy Romer of Colorado and as executive director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources. Salazar is a fifth generation Coloradan whose family settled in the American West before the founding of the United States. Salazar's family was among the Spanish settlers founding the city of Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the late 16th century and has ranched and farmed on the same land in Colorado's San Luis Valley for five generations. With his seven brothers and sisters, Salazar grew up on a remote ranch without electricity and telephone.

Gen. Eric Shinseki, ret. - Secretary of Veterans Affairs

General Shinseki graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1965 with a Bachelor of Science degree and a commission of second lieutenant.  He served two tours in Vietnam, during one of which he lost part of his foot by stepping on a landmine.  He also received his Master's in English Literature from Duke University and attended the Armored Officer Advanced Course, the United States Army Command and General Staff College, and the National War College.  Throughout his 38 years in the army, Shinseki served in a variety of posts throughout the U.S. and Europe.  From 1999 to 2003, Shinseki became the first Asian-American to be the Army Chief of Staff.  His tenure was marked by controversy, as he testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that he believed that the war in Iraq would require several hundred thousand troops to stabilize the country, a number that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld publicly repudiated.  However, Shinseki did work to make the Army more strategically deployable and mobile.  In June 2003, Shinseki completed his four year term as Chief of Staff and then retired as planned.  He is a native of Hawaii and was born in 1942.

Hilda L. Solis - Labor Secretary

Hilda L. Solis, the daughter of Mexican and Nicaraguan immigrants, will serve as Labor Secretary in the new administration. A close ally of organized labor, Solis has championed the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it much easier to unionize workers. Deeply shaped by the experiences of her immigrant parents – her father was a Teamsters union steward and her mother worked on an assembly line – Solis is a tenacious defender of workers' rights. However, with her husband being a small business owner, supporters say that Solis knows how to balance the needs of both, the workers and the companies. A Democratic congresswomen since 2000, Solis sits on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, the House Committee on Natural Resource, and the new House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. She was the first Latina elected to California State Senate, serving from 1994 to 2000, where she led the battle to increase the state's minimum wage by referendum. Solis also served as California assemblywomen and worked at the White House Office of Hispanic Affairs in the Carter Administration. Solis, who represents a heavily Hispanic and Asian district that includes portions of eastern Los Angeles County and East L.A., backed Hillary Clinton in the presidential primaries but was courted by the Obama campaign to help attract Hispanic voters.

Tom Vilsack - Secretary of Agriculture

Tom Vilsack, former governor of Iowa, was chosen to serve as agriculture secretary in the new administration. Vilsack's political career started unexpectedly in 1986 when the mayor of the Iowa town Mount Pleasant where Vilsack lived was shot in a City Council meeting. Vilsack run for the office, won, and was appointed mayor of the largely Republican city. In 1992, he went on to serve in the Iowa State Senate. Running for governor of Iowa in 1998, Vilsack defeated a better-known Republican contender, former congressman Jim Ross Lightfoot. During his two terms as governor, Vilsack was a staunch advocate of alternative fuels like corn-based ethanol (Iowa is a major corn-producing state) and biotechnology. While the new farm bill will be the biggest challenge for the incoming agriculture secretary, biofuels are expected to be an important topic as well. Critics wonder whether Vilsack will manage to be impartial on this issue.

Senior Administration

Melody Barnes - Director, Domestic Policy Council

After serving as a senior domestic policy advisor for the Obama campaign and a co-director of the Agency Review Working Group for the Obama-Biden Transition team, Barnes will become the director of the Domestic Policy Council in the new administration. According to the Center for American Progress, the Domestic Policy Council "is in charge of interagency coordination and policy formation for such topics as education, immigration, criminal justice, and health care – in short, domestic policy." From 1995-2003 she was Sen. Ted. Kennedy's chief council on the Senate Judiciary Committee and since then she has been working as Executive Vice President for Policy at the Center for American Progress. In the past she has also served as the director of legislative affairs for the Equal Employment opportunity Commission and as assistant counsel to the US House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties.

Dennis C. Blair - Director of National Intelligence

Dennis C. Blair, retired four-star admiral of the U.S Navy, was picked by Obama to be the new Director of National Intelligence. During his 34-year career in the Navy, he gained extensive experience in working with national security matters. He served as the commander of the United States Pacific Command from 1999 to 2002. Currently the John M. Shalikashvili chair in national security studies for the National Bureau of Asian Research, he is considered an expert on Asian affairs. He served as the CIA’s first associate director of military support and was the president of a nonprofit organization called the Institute for Defense Analyses. The institute received money from the federal government to review national security issues for the Pentagon. As the Director of National Intelligence, he will be directing the operations of the CIA and the other U.S intelligence agencies. Born on February 4, 1947 in Kittery, Maine. He graduated from the U.S Naval Academy and received his master’s degree at Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship.

Carol M. Browner - Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change

Former administrator of the E.P.A. Carol M. Browner will be overseeing energy, environment and climate change policy from the White House, a position about which much remains unknown so far. As director of the Environmental Protection Agency, where she served during the Clinton administration for nearly eight years, she fought for tougher air pollution standards that the agency successfully defended after having gone all the way to the Supreme Court. Calling climate change "the greatest challenge ever faced," Browner advocates a cap-and-trade system to control carbon dioxide emissions and repudiated the Bush years as "the worst environmental administration ever." After leaving the Clinton administration, Browner held the position of a principal at the Albright Group, an international consulting firm, and Albright Capital Management, both named for the former secretary of state Madeleine Albright. A lawyer and native of Florida, Browner served as legislative director for Senator Al Gore of Tennessee from 1988 to 1991 and headed the Florida Department of Environmental Regulation before joining the Environmental Protection Agency. Browner is also member of the board of the Audubon Society, the League of Conservation Voters, and the Alliance for Climate Protection. During the Clinton years, Browner set tough rules for permissible levels of ozone and fine particles of air pollution and acted as a strict enforcer of environmental laws, which made her unpopular with industry groups and conservatives in Congress.

Gregory Craig - White House Counsel

Initially rumored to be offered a national security job in the new administration, Washington lawyer Gregory Craig is expected to be officially announced as White House counsel to the Obama administration in the coming week. Mr. Craig served as chief coordinator of the legal team that represented Mr. Clinton at his impeachment trial in Congress. Despite his close relationship to the Clintons whom he knows from his time at law school, Gregory Craig endorsed Barack Obama early in the primary season and was a key figure in Obama’s vice-presidential vetting process. Mr. Craig also was director of the Office of Policy and Planning at the State Department and served as Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s chief foreign policy aide. In addition, he was one of the lawyers who defended John W. Hinckley Jr., who shot President Reagan outside a Washington hotel in 1981. In this process, he and his colleagues were able to reach a verdict of “not guilty by reason of insanity” for Mr. Hinckley. An official close to the presidential transition team told CNN that Craig was "highly regarded" by Obama and enjoyed his full trust.

Rahm Emanuel - Chief of Staff

Days after winning the election, President-elect Barack Obama announced that he would be hiring Representative Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff in his new White House administration. Emanuel, the fourth-ranking Democrat in the House was previously a senior Clinton White House official and was recently elected for a fourth term representing a section of Chicago. Rahm’s father was a militant in a Zionist group while growing up in Israel and met his mother, a civil rights activist, in Chicago. Ari Emanuel, Rahm's younger brother is a Hollywood talent agent, and the inspiration for the character Ari Gold on the HBO series "Entourage." Rahm's older brother, Ezekiel, is a bioethicist and oncologist. Emanuel also has a sister, Shoshanna, who is 14 years his junior. Rahm Emanuel served as a financial advisor to President Clinton until 1998. In 2000, President Clinton named Emanuel to the Board of the Directors of Freddie Mac. Since being elected to the House in 2002, Emanuel has been credited with being the driving force behind the Democratic Party takeover of the House in the 2006 elections, while serving as the chairman to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Emanuel is also close friends with Obama chief strategist, David Axelrod, with Axelrod serving as the official witness to Emanuel’s wedding.

Jonathan Favreau - Director of Speechwriting

The 27-year old Jonathan Favreau, who was named White House director of speechwriting, joined Obama's Senate Office as a speechwriter in 2005. He served as Obama’s head speechwriter during the 2008 campaign, helping to write every major speech the president-elect delivered. Favreau, a 2003 graduate of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA, interned during college at Senator John Kerry's office and later worked as a press assistant for John Kerry's 2004 campaign, where he was promoted to become his deputy director of speechwriting. Obama and Favreau first met in 2004, when the president-elect was rehearsing his speech for the Democratic National Convention backstage and Favreau interrupted him to point to an overlapping line. After Obama’s election to the Senate, Robert Gibbs, Obama's communications director who had worked with Favreau during the Kerry campaign, recommended him as a writer. David Axelrod, Obama's chief campaign strategist, said of Favreau, "Barack trusts him […] And Barack doesn't trust too many folks with that — the notion of surrendering that much authority over his own words."

Robert Gibbs - Press Secretary

Robert Gibbs, who has shared Obama's political journey closely since he was running for the U.S. Senate in 2004, was named the President-elect's White House press secretary on November 22. Mr. Gibbs served as communications director for both Senator Obama and for Obama's presidential campaign and also previously worked on several other campaigns, including that of Senator Ernest F. Hollings of South Carolina and his position as a spokesman during the early stages of Senator John Kerry's presidential race.

Member of the inner circle of the Obama campaign where he was a travelling senior adviser, Mr. Gibbs is claimed to be one of the advisers who has spent the most time at Mr. Obama's side and has the reputation of being a combative defender of the President-elect.

Heather Higginbottom - Deputy Director, Domestic Policy Council

Heather Higginbottom has had much experience in policy advising, especially for on the Hill. Previously director legislative director to Sen. John Kerry, Heather Higginbottom was named Kerry's legislative director in February 2006. Shortly thereafter, she joined Sen. Obama's presidential campaign as a senior policy strategist, overseeing policy development. She will continue to work on policy in the new administration as deputy director to the Domestic Policy Council. During the 2004 presidential election, Higginbottom was the deputy national policy director for the Kerry-Edwards campaign. After the election, she established and became executive director of the American Security Project, a national security think tank. During the Clinton administration, Higginbottom, working at the national non-profit Communities in Schools, worked on the 'President's Summit for America's Future,' in which she coordinated the role between faith-based communities and the Summit.

Lisa P. Jackson - Environmental Protection Agency Administrator

Bringing twenty years of experience as an environmental regulator to her new job, Lisa P. Jackson will serve as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Jackson led the New Jersey environmental agency from 2006 to 2008, during which time the state began conducting compliance sweeps to enforce environmental regulations, stopped its controversial bear hunt, and adopted ambitious goals for reducing emissions. During her tenure at New Jersey's Department of Environmental Protection, Jackson was praised for her diplomatic skills but also criticized by the organization Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility for not being tough enough on environmental concerns such as the cleanups of polluted "brownfields" and the limitation of greenhouse gases. A chemical engineer, Jackson worked at the E.P.A. for 16 years, where her duties included developing key hazardous waste cleanup regulations under the federal Superfund site remediation program. During her career, Jackson held various positions at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and was named Chief of Staff of New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine in October 2008.

Gen. James L. Jones - National Security Advisor

As the Marine Corps Commander from 1999-2003, General James Jones, President-elect Barack Obama has chosen a man who has been integrally involved in the Iraq War as his closest aide to national security. Jones led the Marines in the early years of the war in Iraq and has drawn some criticism for his lack of public complaint against the war’s planning. It was reported later in Time "that he had argued with Donald Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs Chairman Peter Pace." Still, his experience will most likely be his strength, as he has firsthand experience in various types of combat situations, from Vietnam to Bosnia and has received many medals for his dedicated service to the United States. After 2003 he served as the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe and the Commander of the US European Command. After 40 years of service, he retired from the Marine Corps in 2007. That year he also was appointed by Secretary Rice as special envoy for Middle East Security and served as Chairman of a Congressional body which investigated the capabilities of local Iraqi security institutions like the police and military. Currently he is the chairman of the non-profit Atlantic Council of the United States.

Ron Kirk - Trade Representative

Ron Kirk, a former mayor of Dallas from 1995 to 2002, will steer the new administration’s trade policies. Free trade proponents expressed support for Kirk who has spoken out in favor of the North American Free Trade Agreement and advocated the permanent normalization of trade relations with China. Kirk, who ran unsuccessfully for a seat as Texas Senator in 2002, is currently a partner at the Houston-based law firm of Vinson & Elkins. Kirk also worked for Texas Governor Ann Richards as Secretary of State in 1994. A skilled negotiator, Kirk has established a good relationship with the business community and was chairman for Obama's campaign in Texas.

Nancy Killefer - Chief Performance Officer

Nancy Killefer has been picked by President-Elect Barack Obama to fill the newly created position, Chief Performance Officer (CPO).  The role of the chief performance officer is to improve the efficiency of government programs and reform spending malpractices. Killefer will be working with Peter Orszag, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), to eliminate waste in government spending. On the day of Killefer’s nomination, Obama spoke of her responsibilities as CPO and stated that she will work on "identifying where there are areas that we can make big change that lasts beyond the economic recovery plan and save taxpayer money over the long term." Killefer is currently the senior executive at a consulting firm, McKinsey & Company. She received her master's degree from MIT’s Sloan School of Business. She served as the assistant secretary of management for the U.S. Department of Treasury in the Clinton Administration from 1997 to 2000. Killefer was the director of the IRS Oversight Board from 2001 to 2005.

Ron Klain - Chief of Staff to Vice President Joe Biden

Having held the same role for Vice President Al Gore, Ron Klain will be chief of staff to the Vice President-elect Joe Biden in the new administration. Ron Klain gained experience working with Biden when they both served at the Senate Judiciary Committee in the early 1990's. Mr. Klain has a longstanding record of advising Democratic presidential nominees, has worked at the Supreme Court and the Justice Department, and also was an advisor to Tom Daschle, an Obama confidant and former Senate majority leader. Mr. Klain is currently general counsel at Revolution Health, an online wellness company. After serving as general counsel to Gore's post-election recount efforts in Florida, Klain was portrayed by actor Kevin Spacey in the HBO movie Recount", a dramatization of the 36-day court battle over the 2000 presidential election results. Klain, who has helped with debate preparation for both the president-elect and his Vice President, has been a "trusted adviser [of Biden] for over 20 years," according to Biden himself on November 15, 2008.

Jim Messina - Deputy Chief of Staff

Previously the national chief of staff for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and currently the director of personnel for the Obama Transition Team, Jim Messina will also be playing a role in the Obama administration as a White House deputy chief of staff. He began his career in politics in 1991 as a staffer for the Montana House Democratic Majority staff. Since then he has worked on many national campaigns, including US Senate campaigns in Alaska and North Dakota, and a US House campaign in New York. He has also served as chief of staff to Senator Byron Dorgan from North Dakota and Representative Carolyn McCarthy from New York. Immediately prior to his work on the Obama campaign, Messina had been a chief of staff to US Senator Max Baucus from Montana. Messina first became acquainted with the President-elect when Messina was the congressional Demcrats’ "internal campaign manager" for their opposition to President Bush's proposition to privatize social security.

Ellen Moran - White House Communications Director

White House communications director in the new administration will be Ellen Moran, executive director of Emily's List, a Washington group that supports the election of women favoring abortion rights to political office. An active advocate of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton during the Democratic presidential primary, Moran, who is linked to Mr. Obama through David Plouffe and David Axelrod, will be responsible for Mr. Obama's media outreach.

Jackie Norris - Chief of Staff to Michelle Obama

Jackie Norris, director of the president-elect’s Iowa campaign, will take the position of Chief of Staff to Michelle Obama. Norris, who was involved in Democratic politics in Iowa for more than 10 years, was former Vice President Al Gore's Iowa political director during his 2000 presidential campaign and also served as finance director for Iowa governor Tom Vilsack's campaign in 1998. Norris also taught high school classes in governance and history.

Peter R. Orszag - Director of the Office of Management and Budget

Until recently the director of the Congressional Budget Office, Peter R. Orszag stepped down from this post when selected as the director of the Office of Management and Budget in the new administration. While taking on the traditional duties of overseeing the federal budget and dealing with economic policy, Orszag's position will also involve a more expansive portfolio, including policy approaches on health care, education, and the environment. Before joining the Congressional Budget Office in January 2007, Mr. Orszag was Senior Fellow and Deputy Director of Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, where he also served as Director of the Hamilton Project. Peter Orszag also is a veteran of the Clinton administration, having served as an economic adviser in the White House and previously at the National Economic Council. During his tenure as head of the CBO, Mr. Orszag dealt extensively with health care issues and their impact on the budget in coming years. A protégé of former Treasury secretary Robert Rubin, Mr. Orszag is a centrist emphasizing free trade and fiscal responsibility.

Leon Panetta - Director, Central Intelligence Agency

Leon Panetta, former Congressman for California's 16th district, will serve as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency in the new administration. He has an extensive background in budget matters, having served as the Chair of the House Budget Committee, as well as a member of the House Agriculture Committee and Chairman of the Nutrition and Domestic Marketing Subcommittee. He served as chief of staff for the Bill Clinton Administration from 1995 to 1997.  During this time, Panetta developed a close relationship with John Podesta, the current leader of Obama's official transition team. Podesta served as Panetta’s deputy chief of staff in the Clinton administration. Panetta served as First Lieutenant in the U.S Army from 1964 to 1966 and received the Army Commendation Medal. He is known for speaking out against torture tactics on military captives, he was quoted saying, "We cannot and we must not use torture under any circumstances. We are better than that." Panetta was also a member of the Iraq Study Group in 2006 and was a member of the Independent Task Force on Immigration and America's Future. He was born on June 28, 1938 in Monterey, California.

Daniel Pfeiffer - Deputy Communications Director

Currently the Transition communications director, Daniel H. Pfeiffer will take the job of deputy communications director in the Obama-Biden administration. Another former staffer to Sen. Tom Daschle, Pfeiffer has been a spokesman for the former Majority Leader and was Daschle's deputy campaign manager when he was defeated in 2004. Prior to his involvement as communications director for the Obama presidential campaign, Pfeiffer had experience working on many national campaigns. He was a spokesman for Al Gore's presidential campaign in 2000, an advisor to South Dakota US Senator Tim Johnson's 2002 re-election campaign. Pfeiffer has also been a communications director for Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana. Daniel Pfeiffer also has ties to the new chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. Sarah Feinberg, Pfeiffer's wife, is a longtime aide to Emanuel and is currently the communications director for the Democratic Congressional caucus in Washington.

Desiree Rogers - White House Social Secretary

A close family friend of the Obama's for years in Chicago, Desiree Rogers will be working with the First Lady to oversee all the White House social events in the next administration. According to the Washington Post, "Her appointment signals that the first couple consider the job crucial to how they introduce themselves to the country and the globe." Her husband, John Rogers, is a co-chair for the Inauguration. John Rogers attended Princeton with Michelle Obama's brother, Craig, and met Barack later. Mr. Rogers also grew up on the same Chicago block as Transition Co-Chair and senior advisor Valerie Jarrett, and they still remain close friends.. Desiree Rogers is currently the President of Social Networking at Allstate Financial and was formerly the director of the Illinois Lottery. She is also the Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees for both the Lincoln Park Zoo and the Museum of Science and Industry and a member of the 2016 Olympic Cultural Committee. During the campaign, Rogers was a major fundraiser.

Christina D. Romer - Director of the Council of Economic Advisors

Romer is currently the Class of 1957-Garff B. Wilson Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley.  She is also co-director of the Program in Monetary Economics at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a member of the Bureau’s Business Cycle Dating Committee.  She has been vice president and a member of the executive committee of the American Economic Association.  She began her career at Berkeley in 1988 and became a full professor in 1993.  Prior to her position at Berkeley, she served as an assistant professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University for three years.  Romer earned her bachelor’s degree in economics from the College of William and Mary in 1981 and her PhD from MIT in 1985.  Her husband, David Romer, is also an economics professor at Berkeley.

Susan Rice - Ambassador to the UN

A Washington, DC native, Susan Rice attended Stanford and was a Rhodes Scholar before returning to Washington. During the 1988 presidential election she was a foreign policy advisor to Michael Dukakis. From 1991 to 1993 she was a management consultant with McKinsey and Company and played various roles during the Clinton Administration. Rice worked at the National Security Council as Director for International Organizations and Peacekeeping until 1997 when she became Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs for the rest of Clinton's Presidency. Family friend and mentor Madeline Albright recommended Rice to the Assistant Secretary of State position. Since then she has been a foreign policy senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and serves on the board of the Atlantic Council, the National Democratic Institute and the US Fund for UNICEF. During the campaign Rice was a senior foreign policy advisor to Obama, and has since been named to the advisory board of the transition team. In the new administration she will serve as the US Ambassador to the United Nations.

Catherine M. Russell - Chief of Staff to Jill Biden

Catherine M. Russell will serve as Chief of Staff to Dr. Jill Biden, Joe Biden's wife, a role she also held during the 2008 campaign. Ms. Russell previously worked as a Senior Advisor to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on international women's issues and served as Associate Deputy Attorney General during the Clinton Administration.

Philip Schiliro - Director of Congressional Relations

A Capitol Hill veteran, Philip Schiliro has been a fixture in Congress for over 25 years, and was recently appointed Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs for when President-elect Obama moves into the White House. While on the Hill, Schiliro has served as policy director to former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and staff director of the Senate Democratic Leadership Committee. He also spent many years as a top aide to long-time Democratic Representative Henry Waxman, as well as a top aide to the House Oversight Committee. He is most often credited with bringing the issue of steroids in Major League Baseball to the attention of Rep. Waxman and Congress in 2005 after reading Jose Conseco's "Juiced." Shortly after, Congress began an investigation of the allegations presented in the book. The investigation featured testimonies by baseball stars Mark McGwire, Jason Giambi, and Barry Bonds. During the presidential campaign Schiliro was a senior advisor to Obama and during the Transition he has taken on the job of director of congressional relations to the President-elect.

Lawrence Summers - Director of the White House National Economic Council

Born on November 30, 1954, Summers began his undergraduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at age 16 and received his PhD in economics from Harvard in 1982.  He taught at both MIT and Harvard and received two prestigious awards, the first 1987 when he became the first social scientist to receive the Alan T. Waterman Award from the National Science Foundation.  The second was the John Bates Clark Medal from the American Economic Association in 1993.  From 1991 to 1993, he served as Chief Economist for the World Bank, leaving the position to join the Department of Treasury.  He began in the Department as Undersecretary for International Affairs, then was promoted to Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, and finally served as Treasury Secretary from 1999 to 2001.  He returned to his alma mater in 2001 to serve as Harvard’s 27th president, a position that he held until 2006.  He is currently the Charles W. Eliot University Professor at Harvard.

Nancy Sutley - Chairwoman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality

Nancy Sutley, a deputy mayor for energy and the environment, is nominated as chairwoman of the Council on Environmental Quality, which will coordinate and devise environmental policies for the White House. Serving for more than a decade in senior environmental and energy policy-making positions in California, Sutley worked as a member of the California State Water Resources Control Board and was the top energy adviser to former Governor Gray Davis. Sutley also served as deputy secretary for policy and intergovernmental relations at the California Environmental Protection Agency and was special assistant to Carol M. Browner, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency in the Clinton administration. A former supervisor of Sutley at the E.P.A. described her as a quick learner and "one of those people [to whom] you give the toughest issues." Closely tied to California state politics, Sutley currently is on the board of directors for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. During the 2008 campaign, Sutley supported Hillary Rodham Clinton and was a member of her Southern California lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender steering committee.

Mona Sutphen - Deputy Chief of Staff

Leading up to her appointment as deputy chief of staff to President Obama, Mona Sutphen had been working at Stonebridge International, a consulting firm based in Washington that advises multinational corporations on international business opportunities. During the 1990s, Sutphen worked as a special assistant to Sandy Berger, who was a national security adviser to President Clinton at the time. She has also been a foreign service officer and an aide to Bill Richardson when he was President Clinton's ambassador to the United Nations. In late 1997, Sutphen helped conduct an interview with Monica Lewinsky for 45 minutes at the request of John Podesta, who was Clinton's deputy White House chief of staff at the time. With Richardson's approval, Sutphen offered Lewinsky a job, which she declined, and shortly thereafter the scandal became public. As a result of the interview and her interactions with Lewinsky, Sutphen's name appeared in the impeachment report by Kenneth Starr. Ms. Sutphen’s brother, David Sutphen is a top lobbyist in the entertainment industry, working for Viacom and the Recording Industry Association of America.

Paul Volcker - Chairman of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board

On January 31, 2008, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker emphasized his support of Obama by stating: "It is only Barack Obama, in his person, in his ideas, in his ability to understand and to articulate both our needs and our hopes that provide the potential for strong and fresh leadership. That leadership must begin here in America but it can also restore needed confidence in our vision, our strength, and our purposes right around the world." In the third presidential debate on October 15, Barack Obama explicitly referred to Volcker as his economic adviser: "On economic policy, I associate with Warren Buffett and former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker. […] Those are the people, Democrats and Republicans, who have shaped my ideas and who will be surrounding me in the White House." Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from 1979 to 1987, Volcker served, over the course of his career, in the Federal Government for almost 30 years and worked under five presidents—John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan.

Being praised by President-elect Barack Obama as "one of the world's foremost economic policy experts," Mr. Volcker has been briefly considered for Treasury Secretary but will now lead the new White House Economic Recovery Advisory Board. This new panel, whose members will include leading figures from a variety of business sectors, is supposed to provide "fresh perspective" to the new administration, "with an infusion of ideas from across the country and from all sectors of our economy," as the President-elect pointed out in his announcement on November 26. Austan Goolsbee, a longstanding policy adviser of Mr. Obama, was appointed as the board's staff director, a position in which he will serve along with his duties as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers.