Jon Hecht

Who is Jon Hecht?

Jonathan Hecht is a Massachusetts State Representative for the 29th Middlesex District.

Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Hecht spent his youth in Belmont, attending Belmont Public Schools. He received an A.B. in History from Stanford University in 1981, a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1988, an M.A. in Law and Diplomacy from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in 1990.

Hecht was a New York City attorney before working as a program officer for human rights and governance for the Ford Foundation in Beijing from 1990–1994. He was a research fellow and law lecturer in East Asian Legal Studies at Harvard Law School from 1994–1998. He co-founded the China Law Center at Yale Law School in 1999 and was its deputy director until 2006.

A former board member of the Arsenal Center for the Arts, Hecht gained a seat on the Watertown Town Council in 2005, going on to chair the council's budget, economic development, and rules committees.