Grant T Harris

Grant T. Harris is CEO of Connect Frontier LLC, a consulting firm that advises companies on doing business in emerging and frontier markets globally. Harris teaches on strategy and political risk in emerging markets as an Adjunct Professor of Global Management at Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, and a Lecturer at Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. From 2011-2015, Harris served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs at the White House. In this role, he conceived of the historic U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, which generated $37 billion in commitments to support trade, investment, and development across Africa. Harris also initiated President Obama’s Doing Business in Africa Campaign and launched the President’s Young African Leaders Initiative. Harris was later appointed by President Obama to serve as a Member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. Previously, Harris served as Deputy Chief of Staff and Counselor to U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice. Earlier, Harris was an attorney at the global law firm of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, where he focused on cross-border transactions in Latin America. Harris also served in the African Affairs Directorate at the White House under President Bill Clinton and in the U.S. Mission to the United Nations under Ambassador Richard Holbrooke. Harris holds a law degree from Yale Law School, a Master’s in Public Affairs, with Distinction, from Princeton University, and a B.A., summa cum laude, from the University of California, Berkeley. Harris grew up in California.