JEFF ANDRADE

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT | email

Jeff Andrade is Senior Vice President leading the practice in policy and appropriations in Federal education and workforce development. He combines over 30 years of political insights from the Executive Branch and on Capitol Hill with real-world corporate experience helping colleges, universities and other organizations navigate Washington on policy and funding issues.  

Before joining the McKeon Group, Jeff had extensive government relations experience with three DC-based firms specializing in higher education, as well as an in-house government relations executive for a national student loan finance company and an international medical school.

In the public sector, he served for over 14 years as both a career civil servant and political appointee in the Executive Branch, including --

• Deputy Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education at the U.S. Department of Education (ED); 

• Director of the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) at ED;

• Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Education during the presidential transition at ED; and

• Associate Administrator for Entrepreneurial Development at the U.S. Small Business Administration, where he managed $100 million in programs that provide training and business counseling for over 2.4 million small business clients. 

During his over 10 years as a civil servant at the Education Department, he worked his way up from entry-level Pell Grant policy analyst to senior budget analyst responsible for the agency’s largest appropriation account. 

On Capitol Hill, he was a senior Republican staffer on the House Education and Workforce Committee successfully reauthorizing the Higher Education Act, Workforce Investment Act, Vocational Rehabilitation Act, Education of the Deaf Act, and Assistive Technology Act. He also worked closely with Chairman McKeon to enact landmark legislation to modernize and create the Federal government’s first performance-based organization, the U.S. Department of Education’s office of Federal Student Aid (FSA).

A first generation American from New Bedford, Massachusetts, Jeff was the first in his family to graduate from college and holds a bachelor’s degree with Honors in Political Science from The American University in Washington, DC. He currently lives in Anne Arundel County, Maryland with his wife, Catherine and son, Anthony, where he actively volunteers for local community, faith-based and political organizations.