Daren Briscoe is a Senior Vice President at GMMB, where as a member of the education team, he has helped clients advance issues of equity and excellence in education while leading accounts and key projects for clients including Howard University, The Council for the Great City Schools, The Campaign for High School Equity, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Daren's strategic communications work is informed by ten years of journalism and communications experience prior to joining GMMB. He spent four years in the Obama administration, most recently as press secretary at the U.S. Department of Education, where he shaped and amplified the education reform efforts of Education Secretary Arne Duncan. Prior to that, Daren served as the chief speechwriter to White House Drug Policy Office (ONDCP) director R. Gil Kerlikowske. Daren’s work at ONDCP was instrumental in helping reposition the Obama administration’s drug policy efforts as a prevention- and treatment-focused public health campaign. He also spent nearly eight years as a journalist, first as a beat reporter at the Los Angeles Times and later at Newsweek magazine, where he worked in the D.C. bureau covering breaking and national news, including the entirety of the 2008 presidential campaign as an embedded reporter with the Obama campaign.