Michael Bennet

Bennet was born in 1964 in New Delhi, India, where his father was an aide to the U.S. ambassador, and grew up in Washington, D.C. He received a B.A. in history from Wesleyan University and a J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was editor in chief of the Yale Law Journal. After graduating from Yale in 1993, Bennet clerked for Judge Francis D. Murnaghan on the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and worked as an associate lawyer at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering. In 1995, he became counsel to U.S. Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, and in 1997, special assistant to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut. Bennet moved to Colorado in 1997, where he became managing director at Anschutz Investment Company. In 2003, then-Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper hired Bennet as his chief of staff. In 2005, he was selected as the superintendent of Denver Public Schools, where he served until 2009. On January 21, 2009, Gov. Bill Ritter "Bill Ritter (Colorado)") appointed Bennet to the U.S. Senate after incumbent Ken Salazar resigned to take a position in the Obama administration. In 2010, Bennet won a full term. In 2019, Bennet published a book titled, The Land of Flickering Lights: Restoring America in an Age of Broken Politics.