Jake Sullivan facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Jake Sullivan
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Official portrait, 2021
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| 28th United States National Security Advisor | |
| Assumed office January 20, 2021 |
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| President | Joe Biden |
| Deputy | Jonathan Finer |
| Preceded by | Robert C. O'Brien |
| National Security Advisor to the Vice President of the United States | |
| In office February 26, 2013 – August 1, 2014 |
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| Vice President | Joe Biden |
| Preceded by | Antony Blinken |
| Succeeded by | Colin Kahl |
| 26th Director of Policy Planning | |
| In office February 4, 2011 – February 15, 2013 |
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| President | Barack Obama |
| Preceded by | Anne-Marie Slaughter |
| Succeeded by | David McKean |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Jacob Jeremiah Sullivan
November 28, 1976 Burlington, Vermont, U.S. |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouse |
Margaret Goodlander
(m. 2015) |
| Education | Yale University (BA, JD) Magdalen College, Oxford (MPhil) |
Jacob Jeremiah Sullivan (born November 28, 1976) is an American attorney serving since 2021 as the U.S. National Security Advisor. He previously served as Director of Policy to President Barack Obama, National Security Advisor to then-Vice President Biden and Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary Hillary Clinton at the U.S. Department of State. Sullivan also served as senior advisor to the U.S. federal government at the Iran nuclear negotiations and senior policy advisor to Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, as well as visiting professor at Yale Law School. On November 23, 2020, President-elect Biden announced that Sullivan would be appointed the United States National Security Advisor. He took office on January 20, 2021.
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Early life and education
Sullivan was born in Burlington, Vermont, to a family of Irish descent and grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His father worked for the Star Tribune and was a professor at the University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and his mother was a high school guidance counselor. Sullivan attended Southwest High School in Minneapolis, where he graduated in 1994. He was a Coca-Cola Scholar, debate champion, president of the student council, and voted "most likely to succeed" in his class.
Educated in the United States and United Kingdom, Sullivan first attended Yale University, where he majored in international studies and political science and was awarded the Alpheus Henry Snow Prize. He was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa his senior year and graduated summa cum laude with distinction in 1998 with a Bachelor of Arts. Sullivan won a Rhodes Scholarship to attend Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied international relations. He was also awarded a Marshall Scholarship, which he declined in favor of the Rhodes. While at Oxford, Sullivan served as a managing editor of the Oxford International Review. He graduated with a Master of Philosophy. He graduated with a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 2003. He is a member, and former board member, of the Truman National Security Project.
At Yale, he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal, the Yale Law & Policy Review, and the Yale Daily News. He interned at the Council on Foreign Relations, was a member of the Yale Debate Association and earned a Truman Scholarship in his junior year. He also worked for Brookings Institution president Strobe Talbott at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization.
Career
Early career
After graduating from law school, Sullivan clerked for Judge Guido Calabresi of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and then for Associate Justice Stephen Breyer of the United States Supreme Court. After his clerkships, Sullivan returned to his hometown of Minneapolis to practice law at Faegre & Benson and taught law as an adjunct professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law. After Faegre & Benson, Sullivan worked as chief counsel to Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar, who connected him to Hillary Clinton.
Obama administration
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In 2008, Sullivan was an advisor to Hillary Clinton during the primary cycle and then to Barack Obama during the general election campaign. He prepared Clinton and Obama for debates. When Clinton became secretary of state, Sullivan joined as her deputy chief of staff and Director of Policy Planning, and travelled with her to 112 countries. In 2012, Hillary Clinton joked that Sullivan was a potential future president of the United States.
Sullivan worked in the Obama administration as deputy assistant to the president and National Security Advisor to Vice President Joe Biden. He became Biden's top security aide in February 2013 after Clinton stepped down as secretary of state. In those posts, he played a role in shaping U.S. foreign policy towards Libya, Syria, and Myanmar.
On June 20, 2014, The New York Times reported that Sullivan was leaving the administration in August 2014 to teach at Yale Law School. As of 2020[update], he was a nonresident senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Iran nuclear negotiations
In November 2013, the Associated Press reported that officials in the Obama administration had been in secret contact with Iranian officials throughout 2013 about the feasibility of an agreement over the Iranian nuclear program. The report stated that American officials, including Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns, Senior White House Iran Advisor Puneet Talwar, and Sullivan, had secretly met with their Iranian counterparts at least five times face to face in Oman. Those efforts paved the way for the Geneva interim agreement on the Iranian nuclear program, known officially as the Joint Plan of Action, signed by Iran and the P5+1 countries in Geneva, Switzerland, on November 24, 2013.
Since then, Sullivan has regularly attended bilateral consultations with Iran in Geneva as a member of the U.S. delegation on the Iran nuclear negotiations.
2016 Clinton presidential campaign
Sullivan was Hillary Clinton's chief foreign policy adviser during her 2016 bid for the presidency.
He was reported to be the only senior staffer who repeatedly suggested that Clinton should spend more time in Midwestern swing states during the election campaign. Clinton's failure to win those states was a key factor in her defeat. Sullivan was prominent in many of the Podesta emails released during the 2016 US presidential election, including Sullivan questioning if Democratic primary candidate Martin O'Malley's 100% clean energy by 2050 plan was "realistic". After the election, Sullivan confessed to feeling "a keen sense of responsibility" for Clinton's defeat. On March 24, 2022, former president Donald Trump sued numerous people including Clinton and Sullivan alleging a conspiracy by the Clinton campaign to invent the Russian collusion scandal. The suit was dismissed on September 8, 2022, and on January 19, 2023, a federal judge imposed nearly $1 million in sanctions on Trump and his lawyer Alina Habba, calling the suit "completely frivolous".
Macro Advisory Partners and Microsoft
After his work with the Clinton campaign, Sullivan joined Macro Advisory Partners, a risk advisory company, in January 2017; it paid him at least $135,000. While at the London-based advisory firm, he advised a number of companies including Uber, Mastercard, Lego, as well as large investment groups such as Bank of America, Aviva, Standard Life Aberdeen, and Standard Chartered. Following the Clinton campaign, he joined the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire as a member of the faculty and senior fellow.
Between 2017 and May 2020, Sullivan served on an advisory council for Microsoft; in 2020, he was paid $45,000 for this work. Given his role in crafting U.S. cyber security policy in the Biden administration, including overseeing the government's response to the January 2021 cyberattack on Microsoft, concerns have been raised about potential conflicts of interest.
Biden administration
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On November 22, 2020, Sullivan was announced as President-elect Joe Biden's choice to be National Security Advisor. Upon his appointment, Sullivan stated that the early priorities of Biden's National Security Council (NSC) are the COVID-19 pandemic, "restructuring the NSC to make public health a permanent national security priority", and China relations. He also emphasized that the Biden administration aimed to repair American relations with allies that he regarded as being damaged during the Trump administration.
On October 6, 2021, a high level meeting between Sullivan and top Chinese diplomat, CCP Politburo member Yang Jiechi, in Zürich, Switzerland focused on a number of contentious aspects of Chinese-American relations, including the existence of Taiwan, trade disputes, the COVID-19 origin theories, as well as civic freedoms in Hong Kong. Despite continued differences between the two nations on these issues, both sides agreed to continue their cooperation "in the spirit of fair and peaceful competition".
On October 25, 2021, Sullivan was briefed by Pentagon officials on the full range of military options to ensure that Iran would not be able to produce a nuclear weapon.
On November 7, 2021, Sullivan stated that the US does not pursue system change in China any longer, marking a clear break from the China policy pursued by previous US administrations. Sullivan said that the US is not seeking a new Cold War with China, but is looking for a system of peaceful coexistence.
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On March 13, 2022, Sullivan warned of a full-fledged NATO response if Russia attacks any part of NATO territory. He reportedly advised Zelenskyy not to try to retake Crimea or attack the Crimean Bridge, fearing that Russia might respond with a nuclear strike. Sullivan also reportedly imposed restrictions to prevent Ukraine from using Western-supplied weapons for retaliatory attacks on Russian territory.
On July 6, 2023, President Joe Biden authorized the provision of cluster munitions in support of a Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russian forces in Russian-annexed southeastern Ukraine, bypassing U.S. law prohibiting the transfer of cluster munitions with a failure rate greater than one percent. Sullivan defended the use of cluster munitions, saying that "Ukraine would not be using these munitions in some foreign land. This is their country they're defending."
On October 29, 2023, Sullivan dismissed calls for a ceasefire in Israel's war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, warning that any potential "humanitarian pause" to get hostages out of Gaza could benefit Hamas.
In January 2024, the Biden administration rejected Vladimir Putin's proposal for a ceasefire in Ukraine. Sullivan informed Putin's foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov that the United States would not discuss a ceasefire without Ukraine's participation.
In March 2024, Sullivan warned Ukrainian officials to cease military strikes in Russia using Ukraine's own weaponry, amidst concerns about impacts on oil prices. US officials had previously placed restrictions against Ukraine using US-provided weapons in Russia.
In May 2024, Sullivan expressed concern at the Irish, Norwegian, and Spanish recognition of Palestine and Israel's growing diplomatic isolation, saying that "we certainly have seen a growing chorus of voices, including voices that had previously been in support of Israel, drift in another direction. That is of concern to us because we do not believe that that contributes to Israel's long-term security or vitality."
On June 9, 2024, Sullivan said that the rescue operation to recover Israeli hostages from the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza was aided by intelligence support from the United States.
On 29 August Sullivan met and conferred with Xi Jinping, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. He had been on a three-day trip. He had spoken (for the fifth time in their careers) to Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi along with Central Military Commission vice chairman General Zhang Youxia the previous day. Concerns were expressed over the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, and Sullivan made special reference to the November 2023 Woodside Summit. It was the first trip to Beijing in eight years by a US National Security Advisor.
Personal life
Sullivan is married to Maggie Goodlander, a former intelligence officer in the United States Navy Reserve who served as an advisor to senators Joe Lieberman and John McCain in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. A graduate of Yale University and Yale Law School, Goodlander served as a law clerk to then-Chief Judge Merrick Garland of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Associate Justice Stephen Breyer of the United States Supreme Court. In 2024, Goodlander became the Democratic nominee for New Hampshire's 2nd congressional district.
In late April 2023, an unknown man reportedly entered Sullivan's home in the West End neighborhood of Washington D.C. at around 3 am, but left before Secret Service agents were alerted. Sullivan discovered the man because he was still working at the time.
See also
In Spanish: Jake Sullivan para niños
- List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States (Seat 2)
