Key Facts
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About
Ronald Alan Klain (born August 8, 1961, in Indianapolis, Indiana) is an American attorney, political consultant, and former lobbyist who served as White House Chief of Staff from November 2020 to February 2023—the longest tenure for a Democratic president's first chief of staff. A veteran Democratic operative and advisor to multiple administrations, he has had an extensive career in U.S. government service, beginning as a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Byron R. White (1987–1988), then serving as chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee under Senator Joseph Biden (1989–1992), and later as chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore during the Clinton administration. He also served as chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden (2009–2011) and was appointed Ebola Response Coordinator under President Barack Obama in 2014. Klain played key roles in judicial nominations, including the confirmation of Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court. In the private sector, he has been a partner at O'Melveny & Myers, general counsel at Revolution LLC, an adjunct professor at Harvard Law School and Georgetown University, and currently oversees Airbnb's global legal, ethics, and community policy functions. He graduated summa cum laude from Georgetown University (1983) and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School (1987), where he served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review and won the Sears Prize. Raised in a Jewish family, he celebrated his bar mitzvah in 1974 at Congregation Beth-El Zedeck in Indianapolis. He is married to Monica Medina, general counsel for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and they have three children: Hannah, Michael, and Daniel.