John Podesta – Co-Chair: Obama-Biden Transition Project

Podesta, the chief executive officer of the Center for American Progress, was quietly coordinating Obama's transition well before his election.

Previously, Podesta was chief of staff for President Clinton from October 1998 until the end of Clinton's administration. He held several other positions at various stages of the Clinton administration. He also has held several Senate staff positions, primarily in the 1980s but also briefly in the mid-1990s as counsel to former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.). In 1998, Podesta and his brother, Tony, co-founded Podesta Associates (now the Podesta Group), a lobbying firm.

Podesta appears regularly as a registered lobbyist in the Senate's lobbying disclosure database, mostly for the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, but also on occasion for the Podesta lobbying firm. For example, the Podesta firm (then named Podesta Mattoon) received $980,000 in the first half of 2002 from anti-nuclear energy public affairs firm Brown and Partners to lobby against a bill that would have approved developing a repository for nuclear waste in Nevada's Yucca Mountain. John Podesta was one of 10 lobbyists on the account. Podesta also was among seven lobbyists for the firm to lobby for the American Insurance Association in the second half of 2002 on issues including terrorism insurance, class actions and class action lawsuits.

In 2008, Podesta published, "The Power of Progress: How America's Progressives Can (Once Again) Save Our Economy, Our Climate, and Our Country." In that book, Podesta published a hypothetical inaugural address for the next president. John McCain seized on that in the late stages of his campaign to claim that Obama's inaugural address was already written.

Podesta is a visiting professor of law at Georgetown University.