Jeff Zients

Jeffrey Dunston Zients (born November 12, 1966) is an American business executive and government official, serving as the 31st White House chief of staff in the administration of U.S. president Joe Biden.

Earlier in the Biden administration, he served as counselor to the president and White House coronavirus response coordinator from January 2021 to April 2022.

Zients graduated from the St. Albans School in 1984 and earned a bachelor's degree in political science from Duke University, graduating summa cum laude in 1988.

After college, Zients worked in management consulting for Mercer Management Consulting (now Oliver Wyman) and Bain & Company.

As a consultant, Zients reportedly enjoyed the “culture, teamwork … and analytical rigor". After management consulting, he was appointed the chief operating officer of DGB Enterprises, a holding company for the Advisory Board Company, Corporate Executive Board, and Atlantic Media Company.

At age 35, Zients was named to Fortune Magazine's "40 under 40", with an estimated wealth of $149 million.

Zients was the chief operating officer (1996–1998), chief executive officer (1998–2000), and chairman (2001–2004) of the Advisory Board Company and former chairman (2000–2001) of the Corporate Executive Board.

Zients and David G. Bradley took each of the companies public through initial public offerings that made both men multimillionaires.

Zients founded and was the managing partner of Portfolio Logic LLC, an investment firm primarily focused on health care and business services.

In 2005, Zients formed a group with Colin Powell and Fred Malek, among others, to compete for the purchase of the Washington Nationals.

The group planned for Malek to be the managing partner for the first three years, after which Zients would take over.

The group was unsuccessful; the team was purchased by a group led by Ted Lerner.

He was a member of the board of directors of XM Satellite Radio until its 2008 merger, and a board member at Sirius XM Radio until his Senate confirmation.

Zients also sat on the boards of Revolution Health Group and Timbuk2 Designs.

In 2009, President Barack Obama appointed Zients to the new position of United States chief performance officer and deputy director for management (DDM) of the Office of Management and Budget.

It was Zients's first governmental experience.

According to Obama, his assignment was to help "streamline processes, cut costs, and find best practices throughout" the U.S. government.

His nomination was approved by the Senate in June 2009.

As DDM, Zients established and chaired the President's Management Council.

Zients was the acting director of OMB from July 2010 to November 2010, and again from January 2012 to April 2013.

Following the error-plagued launch of healthcare.gov on October 1, 2013, Obama and White House chief of staff Denis McDonough asked Zients to take charge of fixing the website.

While leading the "tech surge" to do that, Zients also had an ownership position in PSA Healthcare.

The position of the White House was that Zients's stake in PSA Healthcare, a pediatric home health business, was not a conflict of interest.

During the presidency of Barack Obama, Zients served as director of the National Economic Council from February 2014 to January 2017, served as acting director of the Office of Management and Budget in 2010 and from 2012 to 2013, and led the emergency effort to fix healthcare.gov after the troubled launch of that critical component of the Affordable Care Act.

Before entering government, Zients was an executive at firms including the Advisory Board Company and CEB.

Zients joined the Biden administration after taking leave from his position as chief executive officer of Cranemere, an investment firm.

From 2014 to 2017, Zients was an assistant to the president for economic policy and director of the National Economic Council (NEC).

Zients also chaired the President's Management Advisory Board.

The Wall Street Journal called Zients "a kind of ambassador to the business community", and lobbying groups such as the Business Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce praised Zients as someone who heard them out.

At NEC, Zients worked with the Department of Labor to finalize the fiduciary rule, also known as the conflict of interest rule.

It required financial advisers to provide advice in their clients' best interest.

In 2015, while NEC director, Zients described the Trans-Pacific Partnership as "a massive tax cut for American businesses".

He was a member of Facebook's board of directors from 2018 to 2020.

Zients was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Kensington, Maryland.

His family is Jewish.

The rule was strongly criticized by Wall Street leaders and business groups and was struck down by a federal appeals court in 2018.

Zients joined Facebook's board of directors in 2018, following the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

While on Facebook's board, Zients chaired the Audit and Risk Oversight Committee.

According to Facebook, he declined to seek re-election in 2020 "to devote more time to his business and other professional interests".

Zients was paid $100,000 in cash and roughly $300,000 in stock in exchange for his work on Facebook's audit committee.