Report: Biden Security Adviser Pick Has Ties to Seacoast

Jake Sullivan, a Portsmouth resident and senior fellow and Master in Public Policy faculty member at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire, has been chosen by President-elect Joe Biden as his national security adviser, according to Matt Viser of The Washington Post.

Sullivan was born in Burlington, Vermont before attending high school in Minnesota and later attending Yale. Later in life, Sullivan, 43, found his way back to New England and the Seacoast.

Sullivan was a senior policy adviser to Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign and is also the Montgomery Fellow at Dartmouth College.

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Prior to returning to Yale in a teaching role, Sullivan worked in the Obama administration as Deputy Assistant to the President and National Security Advisor to Biden, who was vice president at the time.

Sullivan is considered one of the foremost experts on foreign policy. He also served as Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State.

According to his bio on the UNH website, Sullivan "is also a member of the board of directors of the Truman National Security Project, the advisory board of the Alliance for Securing Democracy, the International Advisory Council of the United States Institute of Peace, and the Aspen Strategy Group."

"We have no time to lose when it comes to our national security and foreign policy," Biden said in a statement shared by NBC News. "I need a team ready on Day One to help me reclaim America’s seat at the head of the table, rally the world to meet the biggest challenges we face, and advance our security, prosperity, and values. This is the crux of that team.

"These individuals are equally as experienced and crisis-tested as they are innovative and imaginative. Their accomplishments in diplomacy are unmatched, but they also reflect the idea that we cannot meet the profound challenges of this new moment with old thinking and unchanged habits -- or without diversity of background and perspective. It’s why I’ve selected them.”