Rudy Mehrbani is a senior fellow at the Brennan Center. He is also a senior advisor at Democracy Fund, an independent foundation working to ensure that our political system is able to withstand new challenges and deliver on its promise to the American people. He previously served as an assistant to President Obama and director of the Presidential Personnel Office at the White House, where he advised the president, cabinet members, and other senior government officials on human capital issues arising across the executive branch of the federal government. In that role, he served as a member of the White House Transition Coordinating Council in 2016. He has also served as general counsel of the Peace Corps and as an associate counsel and special assistant to the president in the White House Counsel’s Office, where he led the team responsible for vetting President Obama’s executive nominees and appointees. He worked in a variety of other roles in the federal government, including as a special policy advisor to the secretary of housing and urban development.
Earlier in his career, Mehrbani practiced law as an associate at Kirkland & Ellis LLP in Chicago. He received a BA from Emory University and a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. He completed an international comparative business law program at Bucerius Law School in Hamburg, Germany. He is currently a presidentially appointed member of the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.
