Ever wondered how you get a top job at the White House? First you graduate (with honors) in three years from a local university, get your law degree, and then work really, really hard – first as an Assistant DA in New York, next at the U.S. attorney’s office run by Rudy Giuliani, then at the Justice Department serving under Janet Reno, and then at the National Security Council with Condoleezza Rice.
After all that – going from prosecuting mobsters to the fields of international law and then intelligence policy – you might be rewarded one day with what the Washington Post called the “low-ceilinged, windowless confines of a basement office in the West Wing” – but you’d be taking the place of two four-star generals as the President’s point person for handling one of the greatest challenges facing the nation, while heading the White House offices for both Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.
Imagine being one of the select group of fascinated Next Generation students who heard about all this and much more, when they sat down to have lunch with Fran Fragos Townsend at the famed Army and Navy Club in downtown Washington, DC.
A Master Class with
Fran Fragos Townsend
Army and Navy Club
Washington, DC
Fran Fragos Townsend
Fran Fragos Townsend
Frances Fragos Townsend is an attorney and frequent CNN contributor. Ms. Townsend served as Homeland Security Advisor to the President from May 2004 to November 2007. While at the White House, Ms. Townsend chaired the Homeland Security Council and reported to the President on U.S. homeland security policy and counter-terrorism matters. She previously served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Combating Terrorism.
Ms. Townsend came to the White House from the United States Coast Guard, where she had served as Assistant Commandant for Intelligence. Prior to that, Ms. Townsend spent thirteen years at the U.S. Department of Justice in a variety of senior positions, her last assignment as Counsel to the Attorney General for Intelligence Policy. Ms. Townsend began her prosecutorial career in 1985, serving as an Assistant District Attorney in Brooklyn, NY.
Frances M. Fragos was born the daughter of a Greek American father and an Irish American mother. Raised in Wantagh, Long Island, Townsend was the first in her family to finish high school. Her parents were determined that their only child should receive a college education, but could not afford to send her to school. Townsend saved money by accelerating her course load, waiting tables and working as a dormitory adviser. She graduated cum laude from the American University in 1982 where she received a B.A. in Political Science and a B.S. in Psychology. In 1984, she received her Juris Doctor from the University of San Diego School of Law, and in 1986, attended the Institute on International and Comparative Law in London, England.
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