President Donald Trump has tapped the expertise of several NYU alumni to fill positions in his administration. His nominations of Benjamin Black LLM ’20 as chief executive officer of the US International Development Finance Corporation, Sean Cairncross ’01 as national cyber director, and Jacob Helberg MS ’20 as undersecretary of state (economic growth, energy, and the environment) are pending confirmation by the US Senate.
In addition, Derek Theurer LLM ’12 is serving as counselor to the secretary at the US Department of the Treasury, advising on domestic and international tax policy, and Josh Gruenbaum ’16, Stern ’16 has taken the role of commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service in the US General Services Administration.
Below is information on the professional backgrounds of each of these alumni, adapted from official biographies.
- Black is founder and managing partner of investment firm Fortinbras Enterprises LP. He has served as a board member of Ascent Hospitality Management, ESW Group, and Phaidon, among other companies. From 2015 to 2020, he was a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Black was a principal at venture capital firm OCV from 2016 to 2019 before holding senior positions at Knowledge Universe Holdings and Red Carpet Home Cinema. He began his career as an investment banking analyst at Goldman Sachs, and then, after obtaining his JD at Harvard Law School in 2013, he worked at Sullivan & Cromwell and Apollo Global Management.
- During the 2024 presidential campaign, Cairncross served as chief operating officer of the Republican National Committee (RNC), a position he also held during the 2016 campaign. In the first Trump administration, he was chief executive officer of Millennium Challenge Corporation, an independent US government agency that invests in developing countries to foster economic growth and the reduction of poverty. Cairncross also served as deputy assistant to the president and senior White House advisor to the chief of staff. A former partner at Holtzman Vogel Josefiak Torchinsky, Cairncross was deputy executive director and general counsel for the National Republican Senatorial Committee from 2009 to 2013 and RNC chief counsel from 2007 to 2009 after beginning his legal career at Covington & Burling.
- A senior advisor to the CEO of Palantir Technologies, Helberg is also a commissioner for the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission and an adjunct senior fellow for the Technology and National Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. He is the author of The Wires of War: Technology and the Global Struggle for Power (Simon & Schuster, 2021). From 2016 to 2020, Helberg was a policy advisor at Google, leading the company’s internal global product policy efforts against foreign interference. He was a member of the founding team of GeoQuant and a co-founder of Thermogram, Inc.
- Theurer most recently served as senior policy advisor in the Office of the Speaker of the US House of Representatives. Earlier, he was chief tax counsel at the House Committee on Ways and Means and senior tax counsel in the US Senate, where he worked on the design and passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. From 2018 to 2021, he held the position of vice president, tax and fiscal policy at the Business Roundtable. Before serving in government, he worked at ExxonMobil as a tax attorney and then as a senior advisor, Washington office.
- Before joining the Trump administration, Gruenbaum was a director at KKR & Co. Earlier, he worked at Moelis & Co., most recently as a vice president in the restructuring group. His focus in these positions included complex restructurings, mergers and acquisitions, corporate turnarounds, governance, and investing. Gruenbaum has also served on numerous corporate boards, including those of Belk, Galaxy Universal, PetWise, and Quoizel.
Posted March 27, 2025