Over the course of nearly three decades, Derek Chollet has served in key positions in the Pentagon, State Department, White House, Congress, and several leading research institutions.

In the Biden administration, he served most recently as the chief of staff to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, and previously as the counselor of the US Department of State. In these roles he was a top leader at the Pentagon and State Department and a key adviser to both the secretaries of state and defense, playing a central part in shaping US policy toward the Middle East and Ukraine, and trouble-shooting crises from Burma to the Balkans.

Chollet served in a variety of key positions throughout the Obama and Clinton administrations, including as assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, special assistant to the president and senior director for strategic planning on the National Security Council (NSC) staff, and chief speechwriter for UN Ambassador Richard Holbrooke. He began his career by assisting former Secretaries of State James A. Baker III and Warren Christopher with the research and writing of their memoirs.

Outside of government, Chollet served most recently as executive vice president and senior advisor for security and defense policy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF), and as a visiting fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House. He has also been a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Brookings Institution, the Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins/SAIS, and the American Academy in Berlin.

Chollet is the author, coauthor, or coeditor of eight books on US foreign policy, the most recent being The Middle Way: How Three Presidents Shaped America’s Role in the World (Oxford University Press). Educated at Cornell, he did graduate work at Columbia and was raised in Lincoln, Nebraska.