Ketanji Brown Jackson

Ketanji Brown Jackson joined the board in 2019. She serves on the External Affairs Committee and Facilities Master Planning Committee.

Ketanji is a federal judge who serves on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. She was nominated by President Barack Obama in 2012 and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in March of 2013. Until December of 2014, Ketanji also served as a Vice Chair and Commissioner on the United States Sentencing Commission.

Prior to her four years of service on the Sentencing Commission, Ketanji worked for three years as Of Counsel at Morrison & Foerster LLP, with a practice that focused on criminal and civil appellate litigation in both state and federal courts, as well as cases in the Supreme Court of the United States. Before joining Morrison & Foerster LLP, she served as an Assistant Federal Public Defender in the appeals division of the Office of the Federal Public Defender in the District of Columbia, and before that appointment, she worked as an Assistant Special Counsel at the Sentencing Commission and also as an associate with two law firms (one specializing in white-collar criminal defense, and the other focusing on the negotiated settlement of mass-tort claims). Early in her legal career, Ketanji served as a law clerk to three federal judges, including Associate Justice Stephen G. Breyer of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Ketanji is currently a member of the Board of Overseers of Harvard University, the Judicial Conference Committee on Defender Services, and the Council of the American Law Institute. She also currently serves on the board of the D.C. Circuit Historical Society and the United States Supreme Court Fellows Commission.

Ketanji received her J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School, where she served as a supervising editor of the Harvard Law Review. She met her husband, Patrick, when they were both undergraduates at Harvard College, where she received an A.B., magna cum laude, in Government.

Ketanji and her husband, Patrick, have two children, one of whom attends Georgetown Day School.