Friends of Barack

A list of East Bay talent being tapped by the new Obama administration.

One more presidential appointee from the East Bay and the White House is going to have to get a hot tub and a dedicated phone line to Chez Panisse. These East Bay brains have been offered jobs, or are already working, in the Obama administration.

Steven Chu
From: Director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, professor of molecular and cell biology at UC Berkeley.
To: Secretary of Energy.

Christina Romer
From: Professor of economics at UC Berkeley and expert on the Great Depression.
To: Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers tasked with helping craft the recession recovery plan.

Laura D’Andrea Tyson
From: Professor of business and public policy at the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley, and former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton.
To: Member of the Economic Advisory Board.

Van Jones
From: Oakland environmental activist, New York Times best-selling author of the The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Solve Our Two Biggest Problems, and founder of Green For All,
a nonprofit that promotes green-collar jobs for
the poor.
To: Special adviser for green jobs under the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall
From: NATO expert from Piedmont and senior scholar at a Stanford University think tank on international security.
To: Special assistant to the president and the National Security Council’s senior director for European affairs.

Colin Kahl
From: Graduate of Richmond’s Kennedy High School who, as an assistant professor at Georgetown University, has been a leading expert and consultant on international security and the Iraq War.
To: Deputy assistant secretary of defense for Middle Eastern affairs.

Ellen Tauscher
From: U.S. representative for the East Bay’s 10th congressional district and chair of the House Subcommittee on Strategic Forces.
To: Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security (pending confirmation).

Thomas Kalil
From: Referred to as “the center of the Internet revolution” by Google’s Eric Schmidt, Kalil ran Big Ideas @ Berkeley, a UC Berkeley program fostering innovation in science, environment, health, and public policy.
To: Associate policy director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Tony West
From: Oakland resident, former federal prosecutor, and litigator of high-profile state and federal cases, such as the case of the American Taliban member John Walker Lindh.
To: Assistant attorney general for the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Division.