President Biden’s Deputy National Security Advisor Daleep Singh to Take Extended Leave of Absence

Daleep Singh, President Biden’s Deputy National Security Advisor, “is planning to take an extended leave of absence from the White House,” The Washington Post reported. Quoting an anonymous source, The Post said Singh’s leave is due to family reasons and is expected to begin next month. However, “the exact timing and length are still being finalized,” the source told The Post.

Since his appointment in February, Singh, 47, has been working under the radar. But since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, the Indian American has quickly become the public face of the administration’s sanctions against Moscow. He has been seen at the White House press briefings and his meetings and discussions with the president have been widely reported in the media. Singh is the great grand-nephew of Daleep Singh Saund, the first Asian-American elected to the U.S. Congress.

Singh’s departure leaves Biden temporarily without a senior aide to serve as the chief architect of U.S. sanctions on Russia. The Post noted that “the White House is still determining how to fill Singh’s role when he leaves, and among the officials under consideration for the job is Mike Pyle, chief economic adviser to Vice President Harris.”

Singh has made several media appearances to talk about sanctions since his first appearance at the White House press podium was last month. On his second appearance on Feb. 22, he joined press secretary Jen Psaki for the daily press briefing. “Back by popular demand,” Psaki said while introducing Singh. “If he decides he’s not going to be an economics expert anymore, he might have a future in our business.”

He has also become a key author of the White House’s rolling sanctions scheme, which was designed to serve as both a deterrent and now a punishment for Putin’s actions in Ukraine,” Politico noted in its West Wing Playbook.

Last month, Singh’s house in “an upscale Northwest Washington neighborhood about five miles from the White House,” was the target of an “unlawful entry.” The D.C. police were investigating the incident, where a man was seen in the front yard of Singh’s property.

He was also deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury for international affairs and acting Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Markets in the Obama administration.

Singh came to the White House from the New York Federal Reserve, where he played a critical leadership role in the emergency facilities the Fed launched in response to COVID-19,

Before his tenure at the Treasury Department, Singh worked for Goldman Sachs, with a focus on U.S. interest rates and currency markets, from 2003 to 2007, and again from 2008 to 2011. He was also a partner at Element Capital Management from 2007 to 2008. He is a former adjunct senior fellow at the Center for New American Security and the Atlantic Council. He was also an adjunct professor of geoeconomics at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Born in Olney, Maryland and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina Singh holds a bachelor’s degree from Duke University in economics and public policy and a master of business administration/master of public administration from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Harvard University, with a focus on international economics.