Col. Jaron S. Wharton is an infantry officer and a Chief of Staff of the Army Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He previously served on the Army’s People First Task Force and as the commander for 1st Squadron, 75th Cavalry Regiment in the 101st Airborne Division. He was on the National Security Council staff as a deputy executive secretary and later, as the chief of staff to the deputy national security advisor for strategy. He also served as a special assistant to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and liaison to the President’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the Department of State. Wharton is a former White House Fellow, term member at the Council on Foreign Relations, and fellow at the Center for New American Security.
He holds a BS in political science from the United States Military Academy (2001), an MPA from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government (2009), and both an MA (2017) and a PhD (2019) from Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy.