Jonathan Finer

Finer is a native of Norwich, Vermont, the eldest of four children born to Susan (née Burack) and Chad Finer.[4][5][6] His mother was the principal of the Frances C. Richmond School and his father a doctor.[4] He is of Jewish descent.[7] Finer graduated from Hanover High School in Hanover, New Hampshire. He attended Harvard University where he developed an interest in international relations after spending time working for the Labour Party in the United Kingdom.[2] While at Harvard, he covered sports for The Harvard Crimson.[8] He earned a juris doctor from Yale Law School, where he co-founded the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project, and an M.Phil. in international relations from Balliol College, Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.[4] Finer also spent a year in Hong Kong as a Henry Luce Foundation Scholar, working as a reporter and editor at the Far Eastern Economic Review.[9] He is a former member of the board of directors for the Truman National Security Project.

Finer was a foreign and national correspondent at the Washington Post, where he reported from more than twenty countries and spent eighteen months covering the war in Iraq, embedding with the U.S. Marines during the 2003 invasion and based in Baghdad in 2005–2006. He also covered conflicts in Gaza (2009), Russia/Georgia (2008) and Israel/Lebanon (2006); the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign; and the 2004 Major League Baseball playoffs.[2]

Finer joined the Obama administration in 2009 as a White House Fellow, assigned to the Office of the White House Chief of Staff and the National Security Council staff.[10] At the White House, he also served as special advisor for the Middle East and North Africa and foreign policy speechwriter for Vice President Joseph R. Biden and later as senior advisor to deputy national security advisor Antony Blinken.[2] [11]

Prior to his appointment as chief of staff and director of policy planning at the State Department, Finer previously served as deputy chief of staff for policy.[2][3]

After concluding his work with the State Department, Finer joined the New York private equity firm Warburg Pincus[12][13] and served as a senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations.[14]