Avril D. Haines is the former U.S. director of national intelligence. As a member of President Joe Biden’s cabinet, she led the U.S intelligence community and served as the president’s principal intelligence adviser.
Haines has held senior roles across government, including principal deputy national security advisor, deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, legal adviser to the National Security Council, and deputy chief counsel to the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Foreign Relations. She has also worked in academia, having served as a senior research scholar at Columbia University and a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University. She is currently a visiting fellow at All Souls College at Oxford University.
Haines received her Bachelor of Arts in physics from the University of Chicago and a Juris Doctor from Georgetown University Law Center. She served as a law clerk for Judge Danny Boggs on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and founded and ran a bookstore café for five years while engaged in community service in Baltimore. In 2017, President Barack Obama appointed her to the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service. She has also served on several boards and advisory groups over the years.