James Richard Kvaal

Kvaal works in Washington as the president of the Institute for College Access & Success, an education nonprofit based in Oakland, Calif. From 2013 to 2016, he served as the deputy domestic policy adviser for the White House. He graduated from Stanford and received a law degree from Harvard. He is a son of Martha B. Kvaal and Robert J. Kvaal of Lexington, Mass. His mother, who is retired, worked in Boston as a director of program evaluation for the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington. His father retired as a senior vice president and the chief financial officer of Prospero Technologies, a company that provided online interactive services and was based in Littleton, Mass. Kvaal joined the administration in 2009 as a special assistant at the National Economic Council before becoming deputy secretary of education the following year. After a short stint on the Obama re-election campaign in 2012, Kvaal returned to the White House Domestic Policy Council, where he held his post as its deputy director.