Brett McGurk
National Security Council Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa
Brett H. McGurk was born in April 1973 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Connecticut Honors Program and received his Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School. He served three clerkships: one at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York; one at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit; and a third for Chief Justice William Rehnquist at the U.S. Supreme Court. Following his clerkships, he was briefly in private practice and served as an adjunct professor at the University of Virginia School of Law.
He served as a legal adviser to both the Coalition Provisional Authority and the U.S. Ambassador in Baghdad. He was transferred to the National Security Council, where he served as the Director for Iraq, and later as the Special Assistant to President George W. Bush and Senior Director for Iraq and Afghanistan. He was retained during the transition from President Bush to President Obama, serving as a senior adviser to both the president and the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq.
He served in the private sector as a Resident Fellow at the Harvard Institute of Policies and as an International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
In 2013, he was appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iraq and Iran in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs for the State Department. In September 2014, then-Secretary John Kerry announced McGurk’s appointment as deputy senior envoy with the rank of ambassador to General John Allen, the Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL. A year later he was appointed ambassador. He became a lead negotiator on the Iran nuclear deal for the Obama administration. He resigned from his post in December 2018.
In the private sector, he lectured at Stanford University and provided foreign affairs analysis for news networks.
President Joe Biden named McGurk to the National Security Council where he is presently the coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa.
He is married to Gina Chon and has one daughter.
In the News…
As tensions with Iran continue to rise, the United States is shoring up its air and maritime systems in the Middle East.
In Bahrain for the annual Mananna Dialogue summit, Brett McGurk, the National Security Council coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, stated that the U.S. is working to counter threats posed by Iran and related terror groups in the region.
“The United States is now actively building and enabling an integrated air and maritime defense architecture in this region,” Coordinator McGurk said. “Something long talked about is now being done, through innovative partnerships and new technologies.”
Contact this Leader…
Did you pray for Coordinator McGurk today? You can let him know at:
The Honorable Brett McGurk
Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa
White House National Security Council
1600 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20500
