More on Neera Tanden

Influence Watch:

Neera Tanden is a long-time confidante of the Clinton political family and a former Obama administration aide who served as president and CEO of the Center for American Progress (CAP), a left-of-center think tank cofounded by Democratic Party fixer John Podesta, from 2011 t0 2021, before being rehired in 2025 following a period of time working as the Domestic Policy Adviser for the Biden Administration. ^1 2

Neera Tanden was born in Bedford, Massachusetts to immigrant parents from India. At the age of 5, her parents divorced, leaving her mother to raise Tanden and her brother alone. She received her undergraduate degree at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), followed by a law degree from Yale. While at UCLA, she met her now husband, an artist named Ben Edwards, while she was involved with the presidential campaign of Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis. She and her husband have two children.³

After Tanden joined then-President Bill Clinton’s re-election campaign in 1996, she served as a White House aide to President Clinton and as a top staffer in Hillary Clinton’s Senate office. She later served as policy director for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 Presidential campaign.⁴ Following Hillary’s 2008 Democratic primary defeat, Tanden worked as director of domestic policy for the Obama campaign and was reportedly the highest-ranking person on the Clinton’s campaign to go to the Obama administration. ⁵ In the administration she worked as a senior advisor to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and was credited as a “key architect” of Obamacare. ⁶

In November 2011, Tanden left the Obama administration and took over as President of the Center for American Progress, a left-wing think tank. ⁷ Under Tanden, CAP has pushed a number of liberal prerogatives, including tax increases, legal status for large groups of illegal immigrants, controversial environmentalist policies.⁵
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