Jack Lew
Former Chief of Staff
Jack Lew is former Chief of Staff to President Barack Obama. Prior to this role, he was the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), a position he previously held from 1998 to 2001. Before returning to OMB in 2010, Lew was the first Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources, in which capacity he served as Chief Operating Officer of the department.
Before joining the State Department, Lew served as managing director and chief operating officer of Citi Global Wealth Management and then Citi Alternative Investments (CAI). Before that, he was executive vice president and chief operating officer of New York University, where he was responsible for budget, finance, and operations, as well as a professor of public administration. From 2004 through 2008, Lew served on the Corporation for National and Community Service Board and chaired its Management, Administration, and Governance Committee.
Lew served in President Clinton’s cabinet as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). From 1998 to 2001, he led the Administration budget team and served as a member of the National Security Council. During his tenure at OMB, the U.S. budget operated at a surplus for three consecutive years. Earlier, Lew served as OMB’s Deputy Director and was a member of the negotiating team that reached a bi-partisan agreement to balance the budget. As Special Assistant to President Clinton from 1993 to 1994, Mr. Lew helped design Americorps, the national service program.
Lew began his career in Washington in 1973 as a legislative aide. From 1979 to 1987, he was a principal domestic policy advisor to House Speaker Thomas P. O'Neill, Jr, where he served at the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee as Assistant Director and then Executive Director. There, he was the Speaker’s liaison to the Greenspan Commission, which negotiated a bipartisan solution to reform Social Security in 1983 and was responsible for domestic and economic issues, including Medicare, budget, tax, trade, appropriations, and energy issues.
Before joining the Obama Administration, Lew co-chaired the Advisory Board for City Year New York and was on the boards of the Kaiser Family Foundation, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Brookings Institution Hamilton Project, and the Tobin Project. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Academy of Social Insurance, and of the bar in Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.
