David J. Kramer began serving as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human rights, and Labor in March 2008. A native of Massachusetts, earned his BA in Soviet studies and political science from Tufts University and his MA in Soviet studies from Harvard. Continuing in academia, Kramer was a teaching fellow at Harvard and a lecturer in Russian studies at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. He worked as Assistant Director of Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., Associate Director of the Russian and Eurasian Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and, in 2000, as a senior fellow at the neoconservative think tank the Project for the New American Century. Moving into government, Kramer became executive director of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs and a staff member in the State Department’s Office of Public Planning. In July 2005, Kramer became Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs, responsible for Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova. In December 2007, President Bush nominated Kramer to be Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, and he was confirmed in March 2008.