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Jake Sullivan ’98, ’03JD: advising the veep

By Carole Bass ’83, ’97MSL | 10:03am February 28 2013

"When Jake Sullivan first came to work for me," Hillary Clinton ’73JD said late last year, "I told my husband about this incredibly bright rising star—Rhodes Scholar, Yale Law School—and my husband said, 'Well, if he ever learns to play the saxophone, watch out.' Now we travel all over the world together and people say how excited they are to meet a potential future president of the United States—and of course they mean Jake."

Three months later, Clinton has finished her term as Secretary of State, and Sullivan—who was her her deputy chief of staff and policy director—has moved from Foggy Bottom to the White House.

“Jake is the ideal person to serve as my National Security Advisor,” Vice President Joe Biden says in a February 26 press release announcing the move. “He has been part of some of the biggest foreign policy challenges our nation has faced, and he’s always handled himself with incredible skill.”

Sullivan—who graduated from Yale College in 1998 and Yale Law School in 2003—is “a brilliant young analyst” whose skills allowed Clinton “to operate more strategically,” one columnist says. Of course, Clinton’s joke about meeting a future US president alluded to her own possible candidacy.

As for Sullivan’s ambitions, Time magazine asked him in 2009 where he saw himself in five years. He replied: “Back in Minnesota, in law and/or public service.”

They didn’t ask about 2016.

Filed under Jake Sullivan, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden
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