Fmr. Asst. to the President and Principal Deputy National Security Advisor; Carnegie Distinguished Visiting Fellow, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
Gahl Hodges Burt Visiting Policy Fellow - Class of Spring 2026
Jon Finer is a Carnegie Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs.
He served four years as President Joseph R. Biden’s Principal Deputy National Security Advisor, advising the President on foreign policy issues and leading the National Security decision-making process and crisis management for the federal government. Finer was awarded the National Security Medal, the president’s highest award for contributions to national security.
From 2017 to 2020, he was the Global Head of Geo-Political Affairs at Warburg Pincus LLC, a private equity firm, and an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Finer served in a range of roles in President Barack Obama administration, including as Chief of Staff to Secretary of State John Kerry and Director of Policy Planning at the US Department of State. He was awarded the Secretary’s Distinguished Service Award, the department’s highest honor. He also worked for four years in the Obama White House, including as Special Adviser for the Middle East and foreign policy speechwriter for Vice President Biden. He was a White House Fellow under Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.
Prior to entering government, Finer was a foreign and national correspondent for the Washington Post, spending 18 months in Baghdad covering the Iraq War and embedding with the US Marines during the 2003 invasion. He also covered conflicts in Gaza, Georgia, and Israel/Lebanon, the 2004 US Presidential campaign, and the 2004 World Series.
Finer spent a year in Hong Kong as a Henry Luce Foundation Scholar, working as a reporter and editor for the Far Eastern Economic Review, where he received the 2002 Young Journalist Award from the Society of Publishers in Asia. He has taught international affairs at Yale and Princeton, and holds a law degree from Yale, where he co-founded the International Refugee Assistance Project; an MPhil in international relations from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar; and an undergraduate degree from Harvard. He was born and raised in Norwich, Vermont.