At 27, a Holy Cross alumnus is the youngest presidential speechwriter in history.

When billions of people across the globe tuned in to President Barack Obama’s historic inaugural address last January, they were also witnessing the work of recent College of the Holy Cross graduate Jon Favreau. At just 27 years old, he helped craft some of the most memorable and influential campaign speeches of all time for a politician renowned for his oratory and writing ability. When his candidate won the election and he was named chief speechwriter for the president-elect of the United States, Favreau immediately began preparing for the inaugural. Today, as the youngest presidential speechwriter in history, he oversees a staff that gives voice to one of the most influential men in the world.

Those who knew Favreau as a student aren’t surprised he ended up in the White House. “I knew as soon as I got to know Jon that if the political system worked, it would be lucky to tap into people like Jon," associate professor of history Stephanie Yuhl told Boston’s CBS affiliate WBZ TV during the campaign.

A political science major, Favreau was a stand out academically. In addition to earning many accolades on campus, including being named valedictorian, he was awarded a prestigious Harry S. Truman Scholarship. He deferred the honor for the chance to work in politics—an interest sparked through his experiences at Holy Cross.

An active member of the College and Worcester, MA communities throughout his time as a student, Favreau credits his volunteer work at the Worcester welfare office with igniting his passion for social justice. “During my first few years at Holy Cross, my experiences advocating for clients in the Worcester welfare office left me wondering why I would regularly encounter single, working mothers who could not afford food, housing, or medical care, despite the fact that they worked over 40 hours a week,” he said in his valedictory address on May 23, 2003. “If the idea was to get people off welfare rolls and into jobs, why were the jobs failing to provide even the most basic standard of living?”

These questions ultimately led him to take part in the College’s Washington Semester program during his junior year. A native of North Reading, Mass., he landed an internship in the office of his home-state senator, John Kerry. At 20, he was drafting op-ed newspaper pieces for the senator and was drawing the attention of Kerry’s top staffers.

During a visit to the capital to check on Holy Cross interns, Gary DeAngelis, associate director of special programs for the College’s Center for Inter-disciplinary and Special Studies, remembers Kerry’s aides pulling him aside. “They told me that this Favreau kid was really incredible,” he told Holy Cross Magazine. “They told me nobody on the staff could write as well as this kid.”

Impressed with Favreau’s ability and work ethic, Kerry offered him a full-time job. After graduation, he started work as a press assistant responsible for media clipping. But, it wasn’t long before his Holy Cross valedictory address had been circulated around the office. And, in 2003, when Kerry began his run for the presidency, Favreau was asked to join the campaign as a speechwriter.

The campaign was challenging for Favreau, and when Kerry ultimately lost the election, Favreau thought he was finished with politics. "After the Kerry campaign, after all the backbiting and nastiness, my idealism and enthusiasm for politics was crushed," he told Newsweek. "I was grateful for the experience I got, but it was such a difficult experience, along with losing, that I was done. It took Barack to rekindle that."

Just when he had resigned to take his career in a different direction, Favreau was contacted by Obama’s press secretary Robert Gibbs (then communications director). The two had worked together on the Kerry campaign. Gibbs recommended him as a writer and encouraged him to interview with Obama.

After hearing about his experiences in the Worcester welfare office, Obama hired Favreau on the spot.

“When I got into the Obama [Senate] office I didn’t think he’d run for president,” Favreau said in an interview with Holy Cross Magazine. “I didn’t want to work on another campaign. I was thinking that I would stay there until the next election and then go to law school…But with Obama, when he decided to run for president, I said, ‘I’m going to take a shot on this guy.’ I knew how hard it would be, but it seemed worth it.”

So, Favreau packed up and moved to a group house near Obama’s campaign headquarters in Chicago, where he composed a litany of memorable speeches. For two years, his life was ruled by deadlines and fueled by coffee and Red Bull. When he wasn’t writing, he was reading Obama's 1995 autobiography, Dreams From My Father (which he brought with him almost everywhere), or memorizing the 2004 Democratic National Convention keynote speech that made Obama famous.

Today, having worked with Obama for nearly five years, Favreau has the complete trust of the president. Washington Post reporter Eli Saslow wrote that “Obama sometimes jokes that Favreau is not so much a speechwriter as a mind reader. He has mastered Obama's writing style—short, elegant sentences—and internalized his boss's tendency toward reflection and ideological balance.”

While that may be true, Favreau says that a lot of his own opinions were shaped by his time at Holy Cross—“right from my first religion class—social ethics—which was basically how the Jesuit ideal works,” he says. “Seeing the Jesuit tradition of social service and social consciousness really got me active.”

As he told his fellow graduates in 2003, Jesuit education “asks us to live a life that keeps questions of truth, justice, and purpose at the center of our daily conversations, but one that also recognizes the importance of working with others to actively build a community that resembles the ideals we hold dear.”

Despite all he’s accomplished so far, Favreau knows he has more hard work ahead of him. “Obviously it’s going to be harder to govern than it was to campaign,” he says. As for what the future holds, he says, “After writing for President Obama, any other job in politics would be so anticlimactic.”