President Barack Obama appointed Jacob Lew, a Forest Hill High School alumnus and former Queens resident, to be his new chief of staff on Jan. 9 after Bill Daley,the previous chief, resigned to return to his home city of Chicago.
Lew was an internal appointment, previously serving as Obama’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget.
“… Over the last year, he has helped strengthen our economy and streamline the government at a time when we need to do everything we can to keep our recovery going,” Obama said at a White House press briefing. “Jack’s economic advice has been invaluable and he has my complete trust, both because of his mastery of the numbers, but because of the values behind those numbers.”
According to his biography from the Office of Management and Budget, Lew started his career on the Hill in 1973 as a legislative aide. In 1979, he became a principal domestic policy advisor to House Speaker Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr.
He also served on the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committeeas Assistant Director and then Executive Director where he helped negotiate a deal to reform Social Security in 1983 and handled economic issues such as Medicare, budget, tax, trade, appropriations, and energy.
Lew returned to his high school in Forest Hills as recently as 2011 to give a commencement address, which the Office of Management and Budget released a transcript of.
“Now, I must confess that the last time I attended a Forest Hills graduation, my hair was considerably longer and my preferred attire were torn jeans and desert boots – you saw the pictures. And, at that time, I thought I would end up changing the world as a journalist,” he said in it.
He goes on to talk about his love of the Mets in the speech and lament the disappearance of his high school newspaper where he worked during his years there.
Lew also worked in President Bill Clinton’s administration between 1998 and 2001 as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Between the time he worked in the Clinton and Obama administrations he was the managing director and chief operating officer of Citi Global Wealth Management and then Citi Alternative Investments(CAI). He also worked as CEO of New York University before returning to the state department under the Obama administration and once again becoming Director of the Office of Management and Budget in 2010.
“Before he served at OMB for me, Jack spent two years running the extremely complex and challenging budget and operations process for Secretary Clinton at the State Department, where his portfolio also included managing the civilian operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. And over the last year, he has weighed in on many of the major foreign policy decisions that we’ve made,” the President said.
Lew alluded to his opportunities to advise the president in his 2011 commencement speech.
“In each generation, people come to our five boroughs in search of a better life. They study hard and go to public high schools like Forest Hills. And by never accepting limits and always believing that there’s nothing they can’t do, they find themselves at the top of our biggest companies, filling concert halls and theaters, and – yes – sitting in the Oval Office advising Presidents,” Lew said.
