Avril Haines (virtual)

Avril Haines served as director of national intelligence from 2021-2025.

She previously was an assistant to the president and principal deputy national security advisor during the Obama administration.

Haines received a bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Chicago and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center. She held several positions in government and academic roles, including as a senior research scholar at Columbia University, a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, and a member of the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service.

She worked on Capitol Hill as deputy chief counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, during then-Senator Joe Biden's final term as the chairman. She began working in the Obama administration in 2010 as a National Security Council legal advisor. Haines served as the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 2013 to 2015 and assistant to the president and principal deputy national security advisor from 2015 to 2017.