Rob Berschinski, Chief of Staff
Rob Berschinski is a former diplomat and national security official currently serving as Chief of Staff at Harvard Kennedy School.
As an appointee of the Biden Administration, Berschinski served on the White House National Security Council (NSC) staff as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Democracy and Human Rights, and as Senior Advisor to the Administrator and Deputy Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). In his role at the NSC, Berschinski coordinated federal government policy on matters related to human rights, democracy, stemming corruption, and countering foreign disinformation and malign influence. He organized and implemented the 2021 and 2023 Summits for Democracy, the two largest thematic summits in U.S. history, and led the development of the first-ever U.S. Strategy on Countering Corruption. While at USAID, Berschinski served as principal advisor to USAID Administrator Samantha Power and Deputy Administrator Isobel Coleman for matters that came before the National Security Council, including with respect to the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine.
From 2017 to 2021, Berschinski was Senior Vice President for Policy at the human rights advocacy organization Human Rights First (HRF), where he was responsible for the organization’s international policy formulation and implementation.
During the Obama Administration, Berschinski served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (2015-17); Deputy Director of the U.S. Mission to the United Nations’ Washington, D.C. office (2014-15); Special Assistant to then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Ash Carter (2013-14); and NSC Director for Security and Human Rights (2010-13).
Berschinski began civilian service as a Presidential Management Fellow (PMF) in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, during which time he served as a defense fellow with the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee (2009-10). He began his professional career as an active duty intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force, where he completed operational assignments in the Republic of Korea and Germany and deployments to Rwanda and Iraq (2005), the latter as a member of the Joint Special Operations Command.
Berschinski has testified before multiple committees of the U.S. Congress and has appeared on domestic and foreign media outlets including the BBC, NBC, CNN, NPR, and Sky News. His opinions and commentary on foreign policy have been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, Politico, Just Security, and Vanity Fair, among other outlets. He holds a B.A. in political science and M.A. in international relations from Yale University.