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Jared Andrew Cohen (born November 24, 1981) is an American businessman and presidential historian serving as the President of Global Affairs and co-head of the Goldman Sachs Global Institute at
Goldman Sachs The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered in Lower Manhattan in New York City, with regional headquarters in many internationa ...
, which he joined in August 2022 as a Partner and member of the firm's Management Committee. He is also an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the
Council on Foreign Relations The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an American think tank focused on Foreign policy of the United States, U.S. foreign policy and international relations. Founded in 1921, it is an independent and nonpartisan 501(c)(3) nonprofit organi ...
. Previously, he was the founder and the CEO of Jigsaw (formerly Google Ideas). Prior to that, he served as a member of the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff and as an advisor to
Condoleezza Rice Condoleezza "Condi" Rice ( ; born November 14, 1954) is an American diplomat and political scientist serving since 2020 as the 8th director of Stanford University's Hoover Institution. A member of the Republican Party, she previously served ...
and later
Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, lawyer and diplomat. She was the 67th United States secretary of state in the administration of Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, a U.S. senator represent ...
. Brought in by Condoleezza Rice as a member of the Policy Planning Staff, he was one of a few staffers that stayed under Hillary Clinton. In this capacity, he focused on
counter-terrorism Counterterrorism (alternatively spelled: counter-terrorism), also known as anti-terrorism, relates to the practices, military tactics, techniques, and strategies that governments, law enforcement, businesses, and intelligence agencies use to co ...
, counter-radicalization,
Middle East The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...
/
South Asia South Asia is the southern Subregion#Asia, subregion of Asia that is defined in both geographical and Ethnicity, ethnic-Culture, cultural terms. South Asia, with a population of 2.04 billion, contains a quarter (25%) of the world's populatio ...
, Internet freedom, and fostering opposition in repressive countries. According to ''
The New York Times Magazine ''The New York Times Magazine'' is an American Sunday magazine included with the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times''. It features articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors. The magazi ...
'', right before his departure Cohen was one of the architects of what was labeled in 2010 as "21st century statecraft" along with
Richard Boly Richard Boly is a former career U.S. diplomat and former Director of the Office of eDiplomacy, an applied technology think tank for the U.S. Department of State. Previously, he was a National Security Affairs Fellow at the Hoover Institution at ...
and several foreign service officers in the Department of State's Office of eDiplomacy In 2013, Cohen was named by ''
Time Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...
'' as one of its 100 most influential people.


Early life and education

Cohen was born to a
Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
family in
Weston Weston may refer to: Places Australia * Weston, Australian Capital Territory, a suburb of Canberra * Weston, New South Wales * Weston Creek, a residential district of Canberra * Weston Park, Canberra, a park Canada * Weston, Nova Scotia * W ...
,
Connecticut Connecticut ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York (state), New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. ...
. Cohen received a bachelor's degree from
Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...
in 2004. He majored in history and political science and minored in African studies. He subsequently earned a master's degree in international relations from
Oxford University The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...
, where he studied as a
Rhodes Scholar The Rhodes Scholarship is an international Postgraduate education, postgraduate award for students to study at the University of Oxford in Oxford, United Kingdom. The scholarship is open to people from all backgrounds around the world. Esta ...
.


Career

Before graduating college, Cohen pursued interests in government and in mass media. He was an intern at the U.S. State Department.


U.S. State Department

Following his internship and graduation, Cohen served as a member of the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff from 2006 to 2010. He was 24 years of age. His service began after his internship under former U.S. Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice Condoleezza "Condi" Rice ( ; born November 14, 1954) is an American diplomat and political scientist serving since 2020 as the 8th director of Stanford University's Hoover Institution. A member of the Republican Party, she previously served ...
, during the Bush administration. Cohen was one of the few members of Policy Planning kept on by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He played a role in helping shape counter-radicalization strategies and advised on US policy towards Iran and the Middle East. Beginning in April 2009, Cohen aided delegations focused on connecting technology executives with local stakeholders in
Iraq Iraq, officially the Republic of Iraq, is a country in West Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to Iraq–Saudi Arabia border, the south, Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq border, the east, the Persian Gulf and ...
,
Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...
,
Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...
, Congo, and
Syria Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to Syria–Turkey border, the north, Iraq to Iraq–Syria border, t ...
. In the midst of the June 2009 protests in
Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...
, Cohen sought to support the opposition in Iran. He contacted
Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...
, requesting that the company not perform planned maintenance that would have temporarily shut down service in Iran, because the protestors were using Twitter to maintain contact with the outside world. According to ''
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...
'' Ryan Lizza, "The move violated Obama's rule of non-interference, and White House officials were furious." In an interview with Clinton, she "did not betray any disagreement with the President over Iran policy," but "cited Cohen's move with pride." While serving on the Policy Planning Staff, Cohen became an advisor to Richard Holbrooke, who was the first Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. He took several trips with Holbrooke to Afghanistan, where he helped develop some of the early strategic communications strategies. Cohen was among the early adopters of social media in the U.S. government. In April 2010, Cohen had the third largest number of Twitter followers in the US government, behind
Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...
and
John McCain John Sidney McCain III (August 29, 1936 – August 25, 2018) was an American statesman and United States Navy, naval officer who represented the Arizona, state of Arizona in United States Congress, Congress for over 35 years, first as ...
. By September 2013, he was no longer in the top 20.


Google

Cohen left the State Department's Policy Planning staff on 2 September 2010. On 7 September 2010, Cohen became an adjunct senior fellow at The
Council on Foreign Relations The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an American think tank focused on Foreign policy of the United States, U.S. foreign policy and international relations. Founded in 1921, it is an independent and nonpartisan 501(c)(3) nonprofit organi ...
focusing on counter-radicalization. He was hired as the first director of Google Ideas, a new branch within
Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...
, in mid-October 2010. With the creation of Alphabet, Google Ideas spun out into Jigsaw, which Cohen founded and led until 2022. Jigsaw is tasked with "invest ngin and build ngtechnology to address humanity's most intractable problems, from countering violent extremism to online censorship, to expand ngaccess to information for the world’s most vulnerable populations and to defend ngagainst the world’s most challenging security threats." According to a ''
Fast Company ''Fast Company'' is an American business magazine published monthly in print and online, focusing on technology, business, and design. It releases six print issues annually. History ''Fast Company'' was founded in November 1995 by Alan Webb ...
'' article, "Jigsaw’s employees are a mix of engineers and researchers, who have built out a portfolio of more than a dozen products." ''
Wired Wired may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * ''Wired'' (Jeff Beck album), 1976 * ''Wired'' (Hugh Cornwell album), 1993 * ''Wired'' (Mallory Knox album), 2017 * "Wired", a song by Prism from their album '' Beat Street'' * "Wired ...
'' wrote that "The New York–based think tank and tech incubator aims to build products that use Google's massive infrastructure and engineering muscle not to advance the best possibilities of the Internet but to fix the worst of it: surveillance, extremist indoctrination, censorship." According to a 2019 Vice Motherboard report, "Current and former Jigsaw employees describe a toxic workplace environment, mismanagement, poor leadership, HR complaints that haven't resulted in action, retaliation against employees who speak up, and a chronic failure to retain talent, particularly women engineers and researchers. Sources describe a place full of well-intentioned people who are undermined by their own leaders; an organization that, despite the breathless headlines it has garnered, has done little to actually make the internet any better." In June 2022, Cohen addressed the UN Security Council, warning that Russian cyberattacks, disinformation and other forms of information warfare being waged in Ukraine are a “crystal ball” for future problems elsewhere. He called for states to "find a way to turn the volume down and settle on some kind of deterrence doctrine for the cyber domain." In a July 2012 email to members of Clinton's team Cohen reportedly sent to Clinton said: “My team is planning to launch a tool on Sunday that will publicly track and map the defections in Syria and which parts of the government they are coming from.”


Techno-democracy

According to the ''Washington Post''s David Ignatius, the concept of "techno-democracy" was first articulated in detail in a November (2020) article in ''
Foreign Affairs ''Foreign Affairs'' is an American magazine of international relations and foreign policy of the United States, U.S. foreign policy published by the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonprofit organization, nonprofit, nonpartisan, membership or ...
'', which Cohen co-authored with Richard Fontaine. "The concept is anchored on the creation of a 'T-12' group of advanced democracies that would work together to compete with China on issues related to technology." Ignatius writes, "it has the strong backing of Secretary of State
Antony Blinken Antony John Blinken (born April 16, 1962) is an American lawyer and diplomat who served as the 71st United States secretary of state from 2021 to 2025. He previously served as Deputy National Security Advisor, deputy national security advisor ...
and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan."


Goldman Sachs

In July 2022,
Goldman Sachs The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered in Lower Manhattan in New York City, with regional headquarters in many internationa ...
CEO David Solomon announced that the firm had hired Cohen as the firm's President of Global Affairs and co-head of a new Office of Applied Innovation. Cohen officially joined in August as a Partner and member of the firm's Management Committee. In October 2023, he co-founded the Goldman Sachs Global Institute along with George Lee. The Office of Applied Innovation now serves as the Institute's unit focused on emerging technologies. On October 22, 2022, Cohen traveled to Ukraine to meet with President
Volodymyr Zelenskyy Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy (born 25 January 1978) is a Ukrainian politician and former entertainer who has served as the sixth and current president of Ukraine since 2019. He took office five years after the start of the Russo-Ukraini ...
. This visit was the first in-person meeting between the President and the U.S. financial sector since the war began on February 24 that year.


Books


''Life After Power''

Cohen's latest book is ''Life After Power: Seven Presidents and Their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House'' was published in 2024 and is a New York Times Bestseller. The book examines the postpresidential lives of seven chief executives (Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Grover Cleveland, William Howard Taft, Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush). Historian Richard Norton Smith, in his Wall Street Journal review of the book, wrote, "Mr. Cohen shows himself to be a gifted artist in his own right. If some chapters of Life After Power suggest anthologized history, his postpresidential portraits of Mr. Carter and, especially, Mr. Bush, make this book that rarity—a highly readable sequel that confirms the promise of the author’s earlier work."


''Accidental Presidents''

''Accidental Presidents: Eight Men Who Changed America'' was written by Cohen in 2019 and is a ''New York Times'' Bestseller. According to the ''Guardian'' it is "a history of eight vice-presidents who stepped up when their president was removed by fate. It covers the assassinations everyone knows, Lincoln and Kennedy, those some may not, Garfield and McKinley, and what happened when presidents died from natural causes: Harrison, Taylor, Harding, Roosevelt."


''The New Digital Age''

''The New Digital Age: Re-shaping the Future of People, Nations and Business'' co-authored with Google
Executive Chairman The chair, also chairman, chairwoman, or chairperson, is the presiding officer of an organized group such as a board, committee, or deliberative assembly. The person holding the office, who is typically elected or appointed by members of the gro ...
Eric Schmidt Eric Emerson Schmidt (born April 27, 1955) is an American businessman and former computer engineer who was the chief executive officer of Google from 2001 to 2011 and the company's chairman, executive chairman from 2011 to 2015. He also was the ...
, was a ''New York Times'' bestseller. The book considers the geopolitical future when 5 billion additional people come online, and the presumed terrorism, war,
identity theft Identity theft, identity piracy or identity infringement occurs when someone uses another's personal identifying information, like their name, identifying number, or credit card number, without their permission, to commit fraud or other crimes. ...
, conflict and altered relations between nations that the authors say will result. The book grew out of an article, "The Digital Disruption", which was published in ''Foreign Affairs'' magazine in November 2010. Cohen and Schmidt suggest that technology will rewrite the relationship between states and their citizens in the 21st century.
Julian Assange Julian Paul Assange ( ; Hawkins; born 3 July 1971) is an Australian editor, publisher, and activist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. He came to international attention in 2010 after WikiLeaks published a series of News leak, leaks from Chels ...
wrote critically of the book: Another critical review by Evgeny Morozov in ''
The New Republic ''The New Republic'' (often abbreviated as ''TNR'') is an American magazine focused on domestic politics, news, culture, and the arts from a left-wing perspective. It publishes ten print magazines a year and a daily online platform. ''The New Y ...
'' stated:


Early books

Cohen's first book, ''One Hundred Days of Silence: America and the Rwanda Genocide'', was published in 2006 by Rowman & Littlefield and chronicles U.S. policy toward Rwanda during the 1994 Genocide. His second book, ''Children of Jihad: A Young American's Travels Among the Youth of the Middle East'', was published by Penguin Books (Gotham) in October 2007 and has also been published as an audio book and translated into Dutch and Italian. He and co-author Eric Schmidt published "The Dark Side of the Digital Revolution" in the ''
Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...
'' in 2013, and a 2012 article for ''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...
'', entitled "Technology Can Be Harnessed to Fight Drug Cartels in Mexico," which grew out of a trip the two took to
Ciudad Juárez Ciudad Juárez ( , ; "Juárez City"), commonly referred to as just Juárez (Lipan language, Lipan: ''Tsé Táhú'ayá''), is the most populous city in the Administrative divisions of Mexico, Mexican state of Chihuahua (state), Chihuahua. It was k ...
.


Other activities

Cohen has been involved in the
Tribeca Film Festival The Tribeca Festival is an annual film festival organized by Tribeca Enterprises. It takes place each spring in New York City, showcasing a diverse selection of film, episodic, talks, music, games, art, and immersive programming. The festival ...
, serving as a juror in multiple categories over a number of years.


Personal life

He is married to Rebecca Zubaty.


References


External links

*
Profile at GoldmanSachs
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Cohen, Jared 1981 births Living people 21st-century American Jews 21st-century American male writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers Alumni of St John's College, Oxford American male non-fiction writers American Rhodes Scholars George W. Bush administration personnel Google employees Jewish American non-fiction writers Obama administration personnel People from Weston, Connecticut Stanford University alumni United States Department of State officials Goldman Sachs people