Benjamin Nethaniah

Benjamin Nethaniah (born October 21, 1963) is the 45th and current President of the United States.

He was born and raised in Allentown, Pennsylvania. His father, Simon Nethaniah, was a high school history teacher and his mother, Zillah Nethaniah (née Segal), was a legal secretary. Nethaniah is the middle of three children. After he graduated from William Allen High School in 1981, he went on to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Nethaniah graduated from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1985 with a Bachelor of Science in Management Science and a commission as a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army via the Army Reserve Officers Training Corps. Very soon after, he married Sara Artz, his girlfriend of nearly three years.

While at MIT, Nethaniah decided to become an infantry officer. Upon completing the Infantry Officer Basic Course, he attended the U.S. Army Airborne School. Nethaniah was then assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division as a rifle platoon leader within the 1st Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment. He later attended the U.S. Army Ranger School, earning the Ranger Tab. Soon afterwards, Nethaniah went through Ranger orientation training and was then assigned to the 75th Ranger Regiment as a platoon leader in the 3rd Ranger Battalion. Eventually, he rose to the position of company executive officer and then company commander soon after being promoted to Captain. Nethaniah was later elevated to the position of assistant battalion operations officer.

With numerous commendations, he left the U.S. Army in 1993 after eight years of distinguished service and returned to Allentown with his wife and three children. Nethaniah then obtained a position as a business analyst at a management consulting firm. At his wife encouragement, a couple of years later, he decided to run for Congress. Nethaniah won the Republican primary on April 23, 1996. On November 5, 1996, he was elected to the United States House of Representatives by the voters of Pennsylvania's 15th congressional district. During his first term as a congressman, Nethaniah served on the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, the House Committee on Small Business, and the House Committee on Financial Services. He was re-elected in 1998 and during his second term in Congress, he remained on the House Committee on Small Business and the House Committee on Financial Services, but was assigned from the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs to the House Committee on International Relations.

In May of 1999, Nethaniah announced that he would not seek a third term in the House of Representatives in the 2000 election, but instead would run for the United States Senate. He handily won the Republican nomination on April 4, 2000 and narrowly won the U.S. Senate seat on November 7, 2000. Nethaniah was sworn in as a U.S. Senator on January 3, 2001. As a Senator, he served on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. On November 7, 2006, Nethaniah was re-elected to a second term in the U.S. Senate.

On December 15, 2008, he was nominated for the position of United States Ambassador to the United Nations by the President of the United States. After confirmation by the United States Senate on January 22, 2009, Nethaniah resigned from his Senate seat and became the Permanent Representative of the United States of America to the United Nations, with the rank and status of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, and Representative of the United States of America in the Security Council of the United Nations. On March 28, 2011, he resigned from his position as U.S. Ambassador to the UN and announced that he was forming a presidential exploratory committee. Nethaniah officially announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for the presidency on April 25, 2011.

On May 29, 2012, he secured the nominating threshold of 1,144 delegates to become the Republican Party's presumptive nominee with his victory in the Texas presidential primary. On August 15, 2012, Nethaniah announced the selection of Governor Zebulon Hammer of Ohio as his vice-presidential running mate. On August 30, 2012, in Tampa, Florida, he formally accepted the Republican Party's nomination at the 2012 Republican National Convention. On Tuesday, November 6, 2012, Nethaniah was elected 45th president of the United States, beating Democratic Senator Simon Perez of New Jersey. He received 365 votes in the Electoral College and 52.9% in the popular vote.

Benjamin Nethaniah was officially sworn into the presidency by Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts on January 20, 2013 and then formally inaugurated on January 21, 2013.