Derek Chollet is an American foreign policy advisor and author who had served as chief of staff to the United States Secretary of Defense.

Previously, Chollet was the executive vice president for security and defense policy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

[10][11] Chollet started in Washington in 1993, when he was the research assistant to former secretary of state James A. Baker III helping him with his memoir, The Politics of Diplomacy.

[12] In 1999 he joined the Clinton Administration, where he served as chief speechwriter for UN ambassador Richard Holbrooke and as special advisor to deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott.

From 2011 to 2012, Chollet served in the White House Office as special assistant to the president and senior director for strategic planning on the United States National Security Council.

[13] He is also an advisor to Beacon Global Strategies and an Adjunct Senior Research Scholar at the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies.