John Podesta is the former president, and now Chair and Counselor, of the Center for American Progress, a think tank in Washington, DC, as well as a Visiting Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center and was chairman of Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign.
25 Facts About John Podesta
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John Podesta spent most of his early years in Chicago, where he was born, growing up in the neighborhood of Jefferson Park on the city's Northwest Side.
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John Podesta's father did not graduate from high school, but encouraged his children to attend college.
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In 1967, John Podesta graduated from Lane Tech High School in Chicago.
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John Podesta met Bill Clinton in 1970 when they worked in Connecticut for Joseph Duffey, a candidate for the United States Senate.
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John Podesta received his JD from Georgetown University Law Center in 1976.
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John Podesta worked as a trial attorney for the Department of Justice's Honors Program in the Land and Natural Resources Division, and as a Special Assistant to the Director of ACTION, the Federal volunteer agency.
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John Podesta held positions on Capitol Hill, including Counselor to Democratic Leader Senator Thomas Daschle ; Chief Counsel for the Senate Agriculture Committee ; Chief Minority Counsel for the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Patents, Copyrights, and Trademarks; Security and Terrorism; and Regulatory Reform; and Counsel on the Majority Staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
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John Podesta served as both an Assistant to the President and as Deputy Chief of Staff.
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John Podesta was the first White House staffer to get the news of the Lewinsky scandal and was put in charge of managing the crisis.
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John Podesta encouraged Executive Order 12958, which led to efforts to declassify millions of pages from the US diplomatic and national security history.
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In 2003, John Podesta founded the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington, DC, and served as its president and CEO until he stepped down in 2011.
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John Podesta has taught at his alma mater, Georgetown University Law Center, many times over the years, teaching classes on congressional investigations, law and technology, legislation, copyright and public-interest law.
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From 2002 to 2014, John Podesta served as a member of the Constitution Project's bipartisan Liberty and Security Committee.
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John Podesta can be seen in numerous widely circulated photographs of Clinton meeting with Kim Jong-il.
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John Podesta opposes the excessive use of classification, and in a 2004 speech at Princeton University condemned what he called the US's "excessive government secrecy" and "bloated secrecy bureaucracy".
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John Podesta wrote the foreword for a book by Leslie Kean titled "UFOs- Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On The Record".
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John Podesta became an honorary patron of the University Philosophical Society in March 2006.
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John Podesta is an emeritus member of the Knox College Board of Trustees.
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John Podesta has served on the board of directors of Bedford, Massachusetts-based energy company Joule Unlimited since January 2011.
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John Podesta has served on the board of the Portland, Oregon-based Equilibrium Capital.
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In 2013, John Podesta earned $90,000 as a consultant to the West Chester, Pennsylvania-based HJW Foundation, a nonprofit group led by Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss.
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John Podesta was the US representative to the UN High-Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda.
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John Podesta said that Russian intelligence officials attempting to influence the presidential election in favor of Donald Trump were behind the leak.
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John Podesta is Catholic and has worked with Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Catholics United.