Biden's nominee to be Secretary of State.
- Click here for his Wikipedia entry.
A look at his career - his revolving door:
1962: born
until 1971: Attended the Dalton School in New York City
?: attended Harvard University, where he worked on The Harvard Crimson
?: reported for The New Republic.
1988: graduated from Columbia Law School in 1988.
1988: worked with his father Donald in fundraisers for Michael Dukakis.
1988 - 1994: Practiced law in New Tork.
1994 - 2001: served on the United States National Security Council staff at the White House.
1994 - 1998: Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Strategic Planning and NSC Senior Director for Speechwriting
1999 - 2001: Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European and Canadian Affairs.
2002 - 2008: Appointed staff director for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and was also a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
2008: worked for the presidential campaign of Joe Biden, and was a member of the Obama-Biden presidential transition team.
2009 - 2013: Deputy Assistant to the President and National Security Advisor to the Vice President.
2014 - 2017: Deputy Secretary of State.
2017: co-founded WestExec Advisors
More on his private connections:
WestExec Advisors LLC is a consulting firm founded in 2017 by Antony Blinken, Michèle Flournoy, Sergio Aguirre, and Nitin Chadda, all former Obama adminstration officials. WestExec's clients have included Google's Jigsaw, Israeli artificial-intelligence company Windward, and "Fortune 100 types".
In an interview with The Intercept, Flournoy explained WestExec seeks to employ "people recently coming out of government" with "current knowledge, expertise, contacts, networks." The firm and its partners avoid becoming registered lobbyists or foreign agents so that they can (re)enter government service without delays. It does not disclose its clients, whose names are restricted from disclosure by non-disclosure agreements. The firm is named after West Executive Avenue, a street near the West Wing.
. . . WestExec's clients have included Google's Jigsaw, Israeli artificial-intelligence company Windward, and "Fortune 100 types"; according to Foreign Policy, the firm's clientele includes "the defense industry, private equity firms, and hedge funds". In an interview with The Intercept, Flournoy described WestExec's role as facilitating relationships between Silicon Valley firms and the Department of Defense and law enforcement; Flournoy and others compared WestExec to Kissinger Associates.
Blinken is also a partner of private equity firm Pine Island Capital Partners. According to the firm's website, Blinken worked on the D.C. partners team, which works "in tandem with the investment team to source deals, conduct analyses, win bids, close transactions, and directly advise" the firm's portfolio companies. Pine Island's chairman is John Thain, the final chairman of Merrill Lynch before its sale to Bank of America. Blinken recused himself from Pine Island Capital Partners in 2020 to serve as a senior foreign policy advisor with the Biden campaign.
Blinken is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In a 2016 speech at the CFR, Blinken advocated for internationalist and multilateralist policies
