John Podesta

John David Podesta Jr. (born January 8, 1949) is an American political consultant who has served as senior advisor to the president for clean energy innovation and implementation since September 2022.

In 1967, Podesta graduated from Lane Tech High School in Chicago.

Podesta met Bill Clinton in 1970 when they worked in Connecticut for Joseph Duffey, a candidate for the United States Senate.

In 1971, he graduated from Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, where he had served as a volunteer for the presidential candidacy of Eugene McCarthy.

His political career began in 1972, when he worked for George McGovern's unsuccessful presidential campaign.

He received his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in 1976.

Podesta worked as a trial attorney for the Department of Justice's Honors Program in the Land and Natural Resources Division (1976–77), and as a Special Assistant to the Director of ACTION, the Federal volunteer agency (1978–79).

In 1988, he and his brother Tony co-founded Podesta Associates, Inc., a Washington, D.C., "government relations and public affairs" lobbying firm.

Now known as the Podesta Group, the firm "has close ties to the Democratic Party and the Obama administration [and] has been retained by some of the biggest corporations in the country, including Wal-Mart, BP and Lockheed Martin."

Podesta served as both an assistant to the president and as deputy chief of staff.

Before that, he served in the Clinton administration as White House staff secretary from 1993 to 1995 and White House deputy chief of staff for operations from 1997 to 1998.

Earlier, from January 1993 to 1995, he was assistant to the president, staff secretary and a senior policy adviser on government information, privacy, telecommunications security and regulatory policy.

Podesta was the first White House staffer to get the news of the Lewinsky scandal and was put in charge of managing the crisis.

Podesta held positions on Capitol Hill, including Counselor to Democratic Leader Senator Thomas Daschle (1995–96); Chief Counsel for the Senate Agriculture Committee (1987–88); Chief Minority Counsel for the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Patents, Copyrights, and Trademarks; Security and Terrorism; and Regulatory Reform; and Counsel on the Majority Staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee (1979–81).

Podesta previously served as White House chief of staff to President Bill Clinton from 1998 to 2001 and counselor to President Barack Obama from 2014 to 2015.

In 1998, he became President Clinton's chief of staff in the second Clinton administration and served in the position until the end of Clinton's time in office in January 2001.

Podesta encouraged Executive Order 12958, which led to efforts to declassify millions of pages from the U.S. diplomatic and national security history.

From 2002 to 2014, Podesta served as a member of the Constitution Project's bipartisan Liberty and Security Committee.

At a 2002 news conference organized by Coalition for Freedom of Information Podesta stated that, "It is time for the government to declassify records that are more than 25 years old and to provide scientists with data that will assist in determining the real nature of this phenomenon."

Podesta wrote the foreword for a book by Leslie Kean titled "UFOs- Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On The Record".

In 2003, Podesta founded the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C., and served as its president and CEO until he stepped down in 2011.

Podesta opposes the excessive use of classification, and in a 2004 speech at Princeton University condemned what he called the U.S.'s "excessive government secrecy" and "bloated secrecy bureaucracy".

Podesta has called Executive Order 12958, "which set tough standards for classifying documents and led to the unprecedented effort to declassify millions of pages from our nation's diplomatic and national security history," as "perhaps the biggest accomplishment of the Clinton administration."

More than 800 million pages of intelligence documents were declassified as part of the program.

Podesta is described as "a longtime advocate for government disclosure of UFO files."

Podesta has supported petitions by some who believe UFOs are alien spacecraft to the government to release files related to the subject.

In 2008, he authored The Power of Progress: How America's Progressives Can (Once Again) Save Our Economy, Our Climate, and Our Country.

In 2009, he accompanied Bill Clinton to North Korea for negotiations securing the release of two American journalists imprisoned on espionage charges.

He can be seen in numerous widely circulated photographs of Clinton meeting with Kim Jong-il.

He is the former president, and now chair and counselor, of the Center for American Progress (CAP), a think tank in Washington, D.C., as well as a visiting professor of law at the Georgetown University Law Center and was chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Additionally, he was a co-chairman of the Obama-Biden transition team.

In his current role as senior advisor to President Biden, Podesta oversees the disbursement of $370–783 billion in clean energy tax credits and incentives authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.

On January 31, 2024, it was announced that Podesta will succeed John Kerry as top U.S. climate diplomat.

Podesta spent most of his early years in Chicago, where he was born, growing up in the neighborhood of Jefferson Park on the city's Northwest Side.

His mother, Mary (née Kokoris), was Greek-American, and his father, John David Podesta Sr., was Italian-American.

Tony Podesta, a lobbyist, is his brother.

Podesta's father did not graduate from high school, but encouraged his children to attend college.

(CAP chief operating officer Neera Tanden succeeded Podesta as president and CEO, taking over day-to-day operations.) Podesta remained chairman of the nonexecutive board of directors for a time, and remains on the board as of August 2020, although not as chairman.

Podesta has taught at his alma mater, Georgetown University Law Center, many times over the years, teaching classes on congressional investigations, law and technology, legislation, copyright and public-interest law.

On the Georgetown faculty, Podesta's title is Distinguished Visitor from Practice.