Brian Deese was the director of the White House National Economic Council (NEC) under President Joe Biden from 2021 to 2023. The director of the NEC is not a cabinet-level position, so Deese did not need to be confirmed by the Senate. Before his work at the NEC, Deese was global head of sustainable investing at BlackRock Inc. (BLK), a position he’d held since 2017. On July 11, 2023, he became a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Innovation Fellow.

Early Career and Education

Before serving at the White House, Deese worked at the Center for American Progress and the Center for Global Development. He received his bachelor of arts degree from Middlebury College and his J.D. from Yale Law School. Deese temporarily abandoned his Yale law studies to work for the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2008.

Notable Accomplishments

At the NEC, Brian Deese coordinated policymaking on both domestic and international economic issues. The NEC provides economic policy advice to the president, ensuring that policy decisions and programs are in line with the president’s economic goals.

Some environmental activists criticized Deese’s appointment due to his position as the world’s largest asset manager. As head of BlackRock’s sustainable investing division, Deese advised clients on how to achieve investment returns that meet environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria. Immediately before joining BlackRock, Deese was a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Deese previously served during the Obama administration as a White House senior advisor to the president from 2015 to 2017. Between 2009 and 2015 he held several other positions, including special assistant for economic policy to the president following the 2008 financial crisis, deputy director of the NEC, and deputy director as well as acting director of the Office of Management and Budget. He helped develop a bailout of the U.S. auto industry and negotiated the Paris Climate Agreement.

The Bottom Line

After a successful early career at Blackrock, Brian Deese shifte🎀d to economic policy, advising presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama before being appointed director of the NEC under Joe Biden. Deese helped coordinate policy development for the White House on topics such as taxes, regulation, housing policy, green energy, and the automotive industry. He left the NEC in February 2🌞023 and became an MIT Institute Innovation Fellow in July 2023.