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Kerry A. Ates
//July 28, 2022
Kerry A. Ates
Vice President and Chief of Staff, Office of the President
Johns Hopkins University
As vice president and chief of staff for the Office of the President for Johns Hopkins University, Katherine ‘Kerry’ A. Ates works to prepare for important issues and guide the higher education institution’s response. Leading the work of the president’s office and his staff, she serves as President Ronald J. Daniels’ top adviser and his liaison to university and outside groups.
Ates took on the role in January 2014 after working for U.S. Sen. John D. “Jay” Rockefeller IV, D-West Virginia, for more than a decade. Originally joining the office as general counsel in 1997, she was named chief of staff in 2003. Her duties included managing more than 50 staff members in their West Virginia and Washington, D.C., offices and a $3.5 million annual budget. The role also allowed her to serve as the five-term senator’s top adviser on several policy issues, including the economy, intelligence and national security, health care, taxation and transportation.
She was also campaign director and senior adviser to the West Virginia University-based Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute, a research center that has additional laboratories at Johns Hopkins. Before joining the senator’s office, she worked as an attorney for four years.
Ates is a magna cum laude graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park, majoring in government and politics and Japanese, and she earned her Juris Doctor from the University of California, Los Angeles.
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