Neera Tanden

Neera Tanden (born September 10, 1970) is an American political consultant and government official serving as Director of the United States Domestic Policy Council since 2023.

Tanden previously served as a senior advisor and staff secretary to President Joe Biden from 2021 to 2023 and as president of the Center for American Progress (CAP), a center-left policy research and advocacy organization, where she worked in different capacities since its founding in 2003 until she joined the Biden administration in 2021.

Neera Tanden was born on September 10, 1970, in Bedford, Massachusetts, to immigrant parents from India.

She has a brother, Raj.

Her parents divorced when she was five, after which Tanden's mother, Maya, was on welfare for nearly two years before obtaining a job as a travel agent.

Tanden has worked on several Democratic presidential campaigns, including those of Michael Dukakis in 1988, Bill Clinton in 1992, and Barack Obama in 2008.

Tanden is a 1988 graduate of Bedford High School.

Edwards and Tanden both volunteered on Michael Dukakis's unsuccessful run for President in 1988.

Tanden worked as a precinct leader in the Bel Air district of West Los Angeles where many households had already contributed to the Dukakis campaign.

Tanden has worked on domestic policy on Capitol Hill, in think tanks, and for various Democratic senatorial and presidential campaigns.

Tanden has been regarded as a Clinton loyalist and personal friend of Hillary Clinton, whose professional life has been significantly defined by her work with the Clintons.

The New Republic has described Tanden as Hillary Clinton's closest policy adviser.

She worked with President Bill Clinton's campaign on new energy policies, and health-care reform, as associate director for domestic policy in the Clinton White House, and as a domestic policy advisor in the First Lady's Office.

She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1992 and graduated from Yale Law School with a Juris Doctor in 1996.

At Yale Law School, she was submissions editor for the Yale Law & Policy Review.

As a freshman at the University of California, Los Angeles, Tanden met her future husband, artist Benjamin Edwards.

In 1999 and 2000, Tanden was deputy campaign manager and policy director for Hillary Clinton during her successful senatorial campaign in New York.

Tanden was a senior staffer to Hillary Clinton during her 2000 election to a United States Senate seat in New York, and during Clinton's tenure as a Senator.

After the election, Tanden served as Senator Clinton's legislative director from 2003 to 2005.

Tanden advised Clinton during her run for the 2008 Democratic nomination, and later helped her defeat Bernie Sanders to win the nomination in 2016, and run against Donald Trump in the 2016 general election.

In her government service with the Obama administration, Tanden helped draft the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Tanden was Hillary Clinton's policy director for Clinton's unsuccessful bid for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

In one exchange, on August 11, 2015, while discussing news that Harvard University law professor Lawrence Lessig was exploring a bid for the Democratic nomination, Tanden wrote of Lessig, "I fucking hate that guy."

Lessig responded to the incident by saying that while he supported whistle blowing and a pardon of Edward Snowden, Tanden should not have to be burdened with having her private emails scrutinized and that it was not in the public interest.

In 2016, Bruce Reed, a Democratic political operative, said Tanden played a role in implementing Clinton's welfare reform bill, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, signed in 1996.

Tanden denied the claim and in response posted a screenshot of what she claimed was an email from Reed.

Tanden was an unpaid adviser to Clinton's successful 2016 primary season nomination campaign and unsuccessful general election campaign in opposition to Republican candidate Donald Trump, while also running the Center for American Progress.

After Hillary Clinton secured the Democratic nomination for president in 2016, Tanden was named to her transition team.

Tanden was considered a candidate for a top White House job, had Clinton won the presidency.

In early 2016, a spear-fishing attack on Clinton's campaign chairman John Podesta obtained access to his private emails, which included exchanges with Tanden.

On October 7, 2016, 30 minutes after the Access Hollywood tape was first published, WikiLeaks announced via Twitter that it was making available online thousands of emails from Podesta's Gmail account.

Tanden called the release of her personal communications, which often feature her blunt private assessments, a painful experience to endure.

In 2016, blogger Matt Bruenig, a supporter of Bernie Sanders, was fired from the think tank Demos after tweets that called Tanden and Joan Walsh "geriatrics" and Tanden a "scumbag".

In a 2019 article, the New York Times cited a source claiming that Tanden punched ThinkProgress website editor and future Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign manager Faiz Shakir in the chest for asking Clinton about her Iraq War vote.

Tanden later insisted that she had not "slugged" him but had pushed him.

In November 2020, then President-elect Joe Biden announced he would nominate Tanden as Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director.

However, Tanden asked for the nomination to be withdrawn after Senator Joe Manchin announced that he would not vote in favor of confirmation.

In May 2021, Tanden was appointed as a senior advisor to the president, and was later named as White House Staff Secretary in October 2021.

It was announced on May 5, 2023, that Tanden would replace Susan Rice as Director of the United States Domestic Policy Council.

When she was nominated to lead the OMB in 2020, Tanden stated she was "mindful that my path in life would never have been possible without budgetary choices that reflected our nation’s values".