Chris Sununu

Christopher Thomas Sununu (born November 5, 1974) is an American politician and engineer who has served since 2017 as the 82nd governor of New Hampshire.

Sununu graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, in Fairfax County, Virginia, in 1993.

He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a B.S. in civil and environmental engineering in 1998.

After graduating from MIT, Sununu attended New York University Tisch School of the Arts as a film student for two months.

For ten years, Sununu worked as an environmental engineer designing systems and solutions for cleaning up waste sites under the supervision of licensed engineers.

He specialized in soil and groundwater remediation, wastewater treatment plants, and landfill designs.

In 2002, he became an "engineer in training" in California.

From 2006 to 2010, Sununu was an owner and director of Sununu Enterprises, a family business and strategic consulting group in Exeter, New Hampshire.

It focuses on local, national and international real estate development, venture technologies and business acquisitions.

Bird was convicted of brandishing a gun at a woman who trespassed on his posted property in 2008.

But Lynch, who had never granted a pardon during his tenure, vetoed the measure, saying the judicial system had given Bird's case a thorough review and he would not undermine it.

The council then immediately voted to commute Bird's sentence, and Lynch let that vote stand.

In 2010, Sununu led a group of investors in the buyout of Waterville Valley Resort, where he worked as chief executive officer, employing over 700 people in the White Mountains region.

Sununu led an aggressive expansion effort of the ski resort in cooperation with the United States Forest Service.

The resort offers skiing, golf, tennis, mountain biking, and an ice arena.

In 2010, Sununu joined the other four Executive Council members in voting unanimously to release Ward Bird from his mandatory three- to six-year prison sentence for threatening another person with a gun.

The council voted to grant Bird a full pardon.

A member of the Republican Party, Sununu was on the New Hampshire Executive Council from 2011 to 2017.

Sununu earned a bachelor's degree in civil and environmental engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He has been chief executive officer of the Waterville Valley Resort in New Hampshire.

Sununu is a son of former New Hampshire governor and White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu, and a younger brother of former U.S. representative and senator John E. Sununu.

Every member of the family has served as a Republican.

Sununu's 2021 budget proposal included phasing out New Hampshire's only state income tax—on dividends and interest income (which Sununu states unfairly targets senior citizens more likely to be living off those types of income); slightly reducing selected other taxes; and instituting targeted student loan relief for those entering the healthcare, biotechnology, and social work fields.

In January 2021, Sununu began his third term as governor of New Hampshire.

In November 2021, amid speculation that he would run in the 2022 United States Senate election in New Hampshire, he announced that he would instead seek a fourth term as governor in 2022, which he won.

This made Sununu the second modern governor of New Hampshire to serve four terms, after John Lynch.

On July 19, 2023, Sununu announced that he would not run for a fifth term.

Sununu is the son of former Governor John H. Sununu and Nancy Sununu.

He is one of eight siblings, including older brother John E. Sununu, a former U.S. Senator and U.S. Representative.

He was born and raised in Salem, New Hampshire.

His father's paternal ancestors came to the United States from the Middle East around the start of the 20th century, while his paternal grandmother was an immigrant from El Salvador, born to a prominent Salvadoran family of Lebanese, Hispanic and Greek descent who were Greek Orthodox Christians.

His father's paternal ancestry is Lebanese and Greek, both from the Greek Orthodox communities in Jerusalem.

Despite the family's emigration from Jerusalem, some members of the family were from Beirut.

His father's maternal ancestry was Greek and Hispanic.

His father, John, was born in Havana, Cuba.

His paternal grandfather, also named John, was born in the United States, and most of the last two generations of Sununus were also born in the U.S. When he took office as governor, Sununu was sworn in with a Greek Orthodox New Testament Bible belonging to his family.

Sununu was a member of the New Hampshire Executive Council from 2011 to 2017.

In 2011, Sununu led a series of public hearings to review proposals for Managed Medicaid, a program to help New Hampshire Medicaid recipients to coordinate their health care.

On December 16, 2015, the Governor's Advisory Commission on the Intermodal Transportation (GACIT) presented the 10-Year Plan for 2017–2026 to the governor of New Hampshire.

As a voting member of GACIT, Sununu helped develop the blueprint, which "aggressively addressed financial constraint, assuming federal funding of about $160 million per year."