President-elect Joe Biden has selected Ron Klain to be White House Chief of Staff.
The position: Sets overall direction of the White House on behalf of the president.
Ronald Alan Klain was born in 1961 in Indianapolis, Indiana to Stanley Klain, a building contractor, and Sarann Warner (née Horwitz), a travel agent.
He graduated from North Central High School in 1979 and was on the school’s Brain Game team which finished as season runner-up. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree summa cum laude from Georgetown University in 1983. In 1987, he received his Juris Doctor degree magna cum laude from Harvard Law School.
Klain was a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Byron White during the 1987 and 1988 terms.From 1989 to 1992, he served as Chief Counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, overseeing the legal staff’s work on matters of constitutional law, criminal law, antitrust law, and Supreme Court nominations, including the 1991 Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination.
He served as a legislative director for U.S. Representative Ed Markey(D–MA). In 1993, Klain was Associate Counsel to the President, directing judicial selection efforts and leading the team that won confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
In 1994, he became Chief of Staff and Counselor to Attorney General Janet Reno.
In 1995, he was appointed Staff Director of the Senate Democratic Leadership Committee.
In 1995, Klain became Chief of Staff to Al Gore until 1999.In October 1999, Klain joined the Washington, D.C. office of O’Melveny & Myers, a law firm.
In 2000, Klain returned to the Gore campaign, which named him General Counsel of Gore’s Recount Committee.
Klain was registered as a lobbyist for Fannie Mae until 2005.
In 2005, Klain left his partnership at O’Melveny & Myers to become Executive Vice President and General Counsel of Revolution LLC, a technology venture capital firm launched by AOL co-founder Steve Case.
In 2008, Klain was chosen to serve as Chief of Staff to Vice President Joe Biden, the same role he served for Gore.At the time of his October 2014 appointment as Ebola response coordinator, sometimes referred to as Ebola “czar, Klain was General Counsel at Revolution LLC and President of Case Holdings.
His term as Ebola response coordinator ended in February 2015.
Klain has since worked as an external adviser to the Skoll Foundation Global Threats Fund and is Executive Vice President and General Counsel at the investment firm Revolution LLC.
Klain is married to Monica Medina, an attorney and environmental activist who served as Principal Deputy Undersecretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere and is currently at the Walton Family Foundation. They have three children, Hannah, Michael, and Daniel.