John Podesta

John David Podesta ( born January 15, 1949) was the 23rd chief of staff of the White House ( the fourth and last under President Bill Clinton). He in office from 1998 to 2001. Currently, he has chaired the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank. He has also a visiting professor of law at Georgetown University in Washington. He also led the transition team of Barack Obama, who organized the recruitment and preparation for the government takeover after the successful presidential election on November 4, 2008. In December 2013 John Podesta was re-convened as a special advisor.

The road to the White House

The son of an Italian -born father and a Greek -born mother Podesta spent most of his early years in Chicago. He received his degree in 1971 at Knox College in Illinois. He then went to Georgetown University in 1976, he graduated here. As a lawyer, he worked in the gifted program of the Ministry of Justice in the Department of natural resources from 1976 until 1977. From 1978 to 1979 he worked as a special assistant to the chief of the government agency ACTION.

Politically, he stepped on Capitol Hill in 1978 for the first time in appearance: he was appointed advisor to the Senate Judiciary Committee. More items followed: 1987-1988 as a consultant in the Agriculture Committee; Consultant in the Senate Subcommittee on Patents, Copyrights and Trademarks; also for security and terrorism; and for administrative reforms. From 1995 to 1996, he advised the Democratic Senator Tom Daschle. With his brother he founded in 1988 Podesta Associates, Inc., a company that provides contacts with the Government and has worked in public relations. He was also a member of the Administrative Conference of the United States, and in the Committee for the Protection and reduction of state secrets (United States Commission on protecting and reducing government secrecy ).

With Bill Clinton

From January 1993 to 1995, he was also assistant to the president, contact person for the staff, and chairman of pollster. Later he was also personal assistant to the president and deputy chief of staff. In 1998 he was appointed Chief of Staff; this post he held until the end of Clinton's term of office.

Podesta has spoken out under Clinton, as well as in the remainder of his career, for a greater openness of the U.S. government and the dismantling of state secrets.

2006-2013

In March 2006 he was appointed an honorary patron of the University Philosophical Society. Still, he has served as president of the think tank Center for American Progress, which he co-founded himself. As part of a visiting professor at Georgetown University, he brings together students in the intricacies of congressional investigations and the basics of technology laws. In addition, he works for the think tank Constitution Project in the Committee on Freedom and Security.

Under Obama

After the election of Barack Obama as President Podesta was appointed as head of the transition team. It was his job, on the one hand to ensure the smooth transition of government responsibility and prepare the other hand, possibilities and priorities of policy changes. In particular, it was considered candidates to fill several hundred positions in the government and administration to check.

End of 2013, Podesta was brought back by President Barack Obama in the White House. He was given the task of coordinating the climate policy of the President. After legislative measures have failed, the Environmental Protection Agency gets the backing of the White House to classify carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. Thus, the degree of competence of the EPA is connected to demand and enforce measures to reduce CO2 emissions. Podesta is to help as politically experienced lawyer, the Interior Minister Sally Jewell as superior of the EPA to make this shift in approach by the legislature to the executive legally unassailable.