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Benjamin W. Heineman, Jr.

CSIS Trustee and Distinguished Senior Adviser (Non-resident)
Benjamin Heineman is a graduate of Harvard College (1965), Oxford University (1967), and Yale Law School (1971). A former Rhodes scholar, editor in chief of the Yale Law Journal, and law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, he practiced law in Washington, D.C., before serving at the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare from 1977 to 1980, ending his tenure there as assistant secretary for planning and evaluation. Mr. Heineman was then managing partner of the Washington office of Sidley & Austin, focusing on Supreme Court and test case litigation. In 1987, Mr. Heineman became senior vice president, general counsel, and secretary of the General Electric Company (GE) located in Fairfield, Connecticut. In 2004, he was named GE's senior vice president for law and public affairs and served in that position until his retirement at the end of 2005. Mr. Heineman is currently senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and distinguished senior fellow at Harvard Law School's Program on the Legal Profession. He is also senior counsel to the law firm of WilmerHale. Mr. Heineman is a member of the Board of Managers and Overseers of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; a member of the Board of Transparency International-USA; and a trustee of the National Constitutional Center. He is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of Politics of the Powerless (Oxford, 1972), coauthor of Memorandum to the President (Random House, 1980), and author of High Performance with High Integrity (Harvard Business Press, 2008).
 

 

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