Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall

Her paternal grandparents met at the public library in Anaconda, Montana, and married and moved westward, eventually settling in Los Angeles, California, where her father, Richard E. Sherwood, was born in 1929.

Her mother’s parents began their family life in Omaha, Nebraska, where her mother Dorothy Lipsey Romonek was born in 1932.

The family moved to Los Angeles in the early 1940s.

Her parents met in high school, were married in 1953, and remained married until her father’s early death in 1993.

Her father was a Los Angeles civic leader and a partner in the law firm of O’Melveny and Myers, where as a corporate litigator he specialized in antitrust law.

Dorothy and Richard Sherwood were active in supporting the growth of the Los Angeles cultural community, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Center Theater Group, and the California Institute of the Arts.

She was born in Los Angeles, California and has one brother, Ben Sherwood.

She received a bachelor's degree from Harvard University, and a doctorate in international relations from Balliol College, Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar.

She and her brother, Ben Sherwood, were the first sister and brother to win Rhodes Scholarships.

Elizabeth D. Sherwood-Randall (born October 4, 1959) is an American national security and energy leader, public servant, educator, and author currently serving as the 11th United States Homeland Security Advisor to President Joe Biden since 2021.

She previously served in the Clinton and Obama Administrations and held appointments at academic institutions and think tanks.

After receiving her doctorate, Sherwood-Randall served in 1986-1987 as the chief foreign affairs and defense policy advisor to then-Senator Joseph R. Biden.

From January 1986 to September 1987, she served as principal advisor on all foreign and defense policy matters to then-Senator Joe Biden, at the time ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and chairman of the Subcommittee on European Affairs.

From 1990 to 1993, she was the Associate Director of the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center’s Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project, which she co-founded with former Kennedy School Dean and Professor Graham Allison.

From 1990-1993, she was the Associate Director of the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center’s Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project, which she co-founded with former Kennedy School Dean and Professor Graham Allison.

During the Clinton administration, Sherwood-Randall served from 1994-1996 as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia.

In the Clinton Administration, from 1994 to 1996, Sherwood-Randall served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia.

During this period, she led the effort to denuclearize three former Soviet states, for which she was awarded the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service and the Nunn-Lugar Trailblazer Award.

She was part of the Pentagon leadership team that established  the National Guard State Partnership Program, an enduring military-military collaboration between American National Guard forces and partner forces around the world, including most of the countries that emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union.

After departing public service, she became a founding principal of the Harvard-Stanford Preventive Defense Project from 1997-2008, serving with other former senior Defense Department officials including William J. Perry, Ash Carter, and GEN (ret.) John Shalikashvili.

From 1997 to 2008, she was a Founding Principal of the Harvard-Stanford Preventive Defense Project.

She was also a Senior Research Scholar at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation from 2000 to 2008.

In 2004, she was selected to become a Carnegie Scholar and used the prize to support research as an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, where she developed recommendations to strengthen the Transatlantic alliance to meet the challenges of the new century.

During the first term of Barack Obama, Sherwood-Randall served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European Affairs on the White House National Security Council.

She focused on revitalizing America's unique network of alliance relationships and strengthening cooperation with 49 countries and three international institutions in Europe (NATO, the EU, and the OSCE) to advance U.S. global interests.

At the start of Obama's second term, she was appointed the White House Coordinator for Defense Policy, Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction, and Arms Control.

In this new role her responsibilities included defense policy and budgeting; the DOD-DOE nuclear weapons enterprise; military sexual assault prevention; implementation of the Prague arms control and nuclear security agenda; and the elimination of Syria's declared chemical weapons.

After providing advice to the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaigns, she joined the National Security Council at the White House in January 2009.

She served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European Affairs during President Obama’s first term.

In 2013 she was promoted to White House Coordinator for Defense Policy, Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction, and Arms Control.

She served as the Presidential Sherpa for the Nuclear Security Summit in 2014, which mobilized international actions to prevent terrorist acquisition of fissile materials.

Sherwood-Randall was nominated by President Obama to be Deputy Secretary of Energy and confirmed by the United States Senate on September 18, 2014.

At the Department of Energy she launched a major initiative in partnership with leaders of the American electricity, oil and gas sectors to tackle emerging cyber and physical challenges to the power grid.

She stated in 2016 that "we need to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy and spur innovation and science and technology...so that we can power the world with low-carbon power."

In July 2014 she was nominated by President Obama to become the 18th United States Deputy Secretary of Energy and, following Senate confirmation in September 2014, she served in that role from October 2014 until January 20, 2017.

Following her departure from government service in 2017, she held an array of professorial and senior fellow positions at academic institutions, including at the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Sherwood-Randall’s great grandparents emigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe in the late 19th century.

After advising the Biden 2020 presidential campaign and transition team, Sherwood-Randall was discussed as a lead contender to be President Biden’s Secretary of Energy.

Instead, she was appointed as the President’s White House Homeland Security Advisor and Deputy National Security Advisor in January 2021.

Sherwood-Randall was part of the Biden administration team that launched the U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism on May 25, 2023.