Political Ambassador Jamal Simmons

/www.jamalsimmons.com/

Jamal Simmons has worked at the nexus of politics and media for nearly 20 years. At The Raben Group, a Washington, DC consulting firm, he provides communications and strategic counsel to corporate and non-profit clients. During the 2010 congressional election he was the Democratic political analyst for CBS News and before that a fixture on CNN during the 2008 election. Currently, he can be seen each week offering political analysis on several television programs.

After volunteering for campaigns while growing up in Detroit, Jamal got his professional start in presidential politics traveling with Bill Clinton during his successful 1992 campaign and was a political appointee during the first Clinton Administration with U.S. Trade Representative and Commerce Secretary Mickey Kantor. In 2000, he was deputy communications director for Vice President Al Gore during his presidential campaign and served as a Gore spokesman in West Palm Beach during the Florida Recount. He has also served as traveling press secretary to presidential candidates Bob Graham and Wesley Clark, campaign communications director for U.S. Senator Max Cleland, and chief of staff to U.S. Representative Carolyn Cheeks-Kilpatrick. Jamal was an advisor to Nevada Democrats and the Democratic National Committee for the 2008 Obama/Biden campaign.

Jamal has an extensive international background as well. He planned events for the Clinton White House in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, and has represented major corporations in China and Latin America. He worked on the 2004 We Are the Future charity concert with Quincy Jones in Rome and Al Gore’s Live Earth concert in Hamburg, Germany in 2007; and was a French American Foundation 2009-10 Young Leader and former term member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

A graduate of Morehouse College, where he received the Presidential Award of Distinction in 2009, Simmons has a master in public policy degree from Harvard University. His views and opinions have been featured in several major publications such as GQ Magazine, the New York Times and Politico.