John Kerry

Biography

John Forbes Kerry was born in Aurora, Colorado, in 1943 into the Forbes family and grew up in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. After graduating from Yale University in 1966 he joined the U.S. Naval Reserve and served in South Vietnam in command of a Swift Boat, receiving the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts. Back home he became a prominent spokesman for Vietnam Veterans Against the War and in 1971 testified against the war before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

After losing a race for the House of Representatives in 1972, he earned a law degree at Boston College and worked as a prosecutor in Middlesex County and in private practice. He was elected lieutenant governor of Massachusetts on Michael Dukakis's ticket in 1982 and won a U.S. Senate seat in 1984, holding it until 2013; in his last years there he chaired the Foreign Relations Committee.

Kerry won the Democratic nomination for president in 2004 but lost the general election to George W. Bush. As Barack Obama's secretary of state from 2013 to 2017 he helped broker the agreement under which Syria gave up its chemical weapons, negotiated the agreements limiting Iran's nuclear programme, and signed the Paris climate agreement for the United States. From 2021 to 2024 he was the first U.S. special presidential envoy for climate under Joe Biden.