Mark Lippert

Mark W. Lippert (born February 28, 1973) is the former Chief-of-Staff for the National Security Council in the Obama administration. Lippert grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. He attended Stanford where he received his degree in international relations. He started out as a policy advisor to Senator Patrick Leahy and a Vermont political organizer. He worked for five years in the Senate Appropriations Committee Foreign Operations Subcommittee. He also ha... more

Mark W. Lippert (born February 28, 1973) is the former Chief-of-Staff for the National Security Council in the Obama administration. Lippert grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. He attended Stanford where he received his degree in international relations. He started out as a policy advisor to Senator Patrick Leahy and a Vermont political organizer. He worked for five years in the Senate Appropriations Committee Foreign Operations Subcommittee. He also handled foreign policy and defense issues for the Senate Democratic Policy Committee. In 2005, he both became a senior foreign-policy aide to Senator Obama and joined the Navy Reserve. From 2007 until the summer of 2008, he served about a year in what had been scheduled as a nine-month tour of duty in Iraq as an intelligence officer for the Navy SEALs; as of 2008 he is a lieutenant junior grade. He played a key role in Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. On October 1, 2009, it was announced that Lippert was resigning from the Obama... less