2 minute read
A Career Built with HKS
Eric Rosenbach MPP 2004 (right) ascends the new social staircase in the Wexner Building with Icelandic President Guðni Th. Jóhannesson. PHOTO CREDIT: Benn Craig/Belfer Center.
Eric Rosenbach MPP 2004
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Eric Rosenbach MPP 2004 is on his third tour with the Kennedy School: first he was a student, then he served as executive director of the Belfer Center, and now he is lecturer of public policy, co-director (with Ash Carter), of the Belfer Center, and director of the School’s Defending Digital Democracy Project. A former intelligence officer with the Army and former chief of staff at the Pentagon, Rosenbach has co-authored several books on national security.
Why did you become interested in international security?
I was at Davidson College and I got a small grant from the Dean Rusk Center for International Affairs to go to Vietnam the first year it was open to American tourists, in 1994. I saw what was happening in Vietnam as a country, which was going through the process of becoming less communist, as well as the effects of war in a country in which my dad had served. And being in the Army myself, finishing basic training at Fort Bragg, I was very interested to see all this.
What keeps you coming back to Harvard Kennedy School?
After serving as an active duty intelligence officer, I was working as a chief security officer for a well-known Internet service provider. Then 9/11 happened. Even though I was making lots of money, I realized I was bored, so I applied to the Kennedy School and came here for the first time in the fall of 2002. I later came back to HKS as executive director of the Belfer Center, then went to work in the Obama administration.
Has the HKS network helped you in your career?
I can say totally and legitimately that every job I’ve gotten after I graduated from the Kennedy School has been because of HKS. My first job after graduating in 2004 was working on John Kerry’s campaign, working for Rand Beers, who had been at HKS as a lecturer. After Kerry lost his presidential bid, I was unemployed for a month. Graham Allison, for whom I’d served as a course assistant and whom I helped with research for his books, told me about a job with Senator Chuck Hegel, who was looking for a national security adviser, and I got the job.
Before I went to work in the Obama administration, everyone I networked with to get an appointee position was a former faculty or graduate of HKS, working for senior people in the administration.
When I got to the point in my career where I could hire people, I always hired HKS alumni. They were so good—they always made me look good, even when I wasn’t! HKS alumni have a great combination of skills in that they know how to do the analysis, write a memo, and get things done in a complicated political environment. They are good people who want to do the right thing.
How is the support of alumni and donors important to what you do?
Having resources is really important—and this is something that is changing. Interestingly, I still have student debt—since grad school, I’ve worked only in government and academia. The support that students receive in the form of financial aid frees them to go and do public sector work rather than having to go into the private sector.
At the Defending Digital Democracy Project, we’re so lucky that the Belfer family and others have contributed in a way that we think is helping to improve elections.
