“It’s about getting the Cabinet leaders ready to lead, equipping them with the information they need,” a Biden transition official said in advance of the public rollout.
The teams that go into federal agencies are a tradition of presidential transition. But the Biden teams will not make formal contact with Trump appointees and the career staff now in government because the outgoing administration has not yet released transition resources and allowed access to agencies, a decision that has led to a standoff with the Biden transition.
However, Biden transition officials stressed that they are working through informal channels to learn what’s going in the government, talking with think tanks, labor and nonprofit groups and those who previously served at federal agencies.
“We may not be making formal contact, but the transition work is continuing to move full speed ahead,” the official said.
Besides preparing Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to take over the government, the teams will serve as “ambassadors to the career staff” of 2.1 million, the official said, “folks who are our partners in solving the world’s problems.” The reference drew a contrast with the incoming Trump administration four years ago, whose “landing teams” established a mistrust of career civil servants at many agencies.
The vast majority of the Biden team members will volunteer their time, transition officials said. “They’ve seen agencies under strain” during the Trump administration, another official said
An array of diverse and long-established experts in the federal government will lead or hold prominent roles on the teams, ranging from state and local officials with track records in key policy areas to former diplomats and other senior officials from the Obama administration.
Transition officials stressed that the diversity of these initial emissaries to the government reflect the Biden team’s commitment to a diverse workforce at all levels. Some are likely to stay on as political appointees, while others will return to other roles outside government, following a long tradition in new administrations.
These are some officials who will have prominent roles in the effort and the agency they will work with:
●Kiran Ahuja, Office of Personnel Management. Ahuja is chief executive officer of Philanthropy Northwest, the regional philanthropic network for Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming. She was executive director of the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders from 2009 to 2015 and previously served as chief of staff at the personnel agency from 2015 to 2017.
●Andrea Flores, Department of Homeland Security. Flores, an attorney, is deputy director of immigration policy for the American Civil Liberties Union’s equality division. Previously, she was a policy assistant covering immigration and rural affairs on the Domestic Policy Council during the Obama-Biden administration. She also worked for the secretary of homeland security and the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
●Rahul Gupta, Office of National Drug Control Policy. Gupta served as the West Virginia health commissioner, leading the state’s opioid crisis response efforts and launching a number of pioneering public health initiatives such as the Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome Birthscore program to identify high-risk infants. He is currently senior vice president and chief medical and health officer at the March of Dimes.
●Michelle Howard, Department of Defense. Howard is former Vice Chief of Naval Operations and former Commander of Naval Forces in Europe and Africa. She was the first Black woman to command a Navy ship and to achieve two- and three-star rank, as well as the first female graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy selected for flag rank, and the first female to be promoted to the rank of 4-star admiral in the U.S. Navy. Howard retired after serving thirty-five years in the U.S. Navy.
●Justin Jackson, Central Intelligence Agency. A 28-year veteran of the CIA, Jackson is former deputy director of the National Clandestine Service , and at the time of his retirement was the highest ranking Black American at the agency. Jackson also was a member of CIA Director John Brennan’s Overcoming Barriers to Advancement/Diversity in Leadership study.
●Monique King-Veihland, Department of Housing and Urban Development. King-Viehland is first African American serving Executive Director of the Community Development Commission and Housing Authority of the County of Los Angeles. During her time with LA County, King-Viehland oversaw a funding increase that created 100 percent more affordable units. She is now director of State and Local Housing Policy at Urban Institute. She leads efforts to catalyze Urban’s vast housing policy expertise into strategies for, and with, state and local housing leaders.
●Chris Lu, Department of Labor. Lu is practitioner senior fellow at the University of Virginia Miller Center. From 2014 to 2017, he was deputy secretary of labor. He also served as the Obama administration’s White House Cabinet Secretary and assistant to the president, the president’s primary liaison to the federal agencies. The son of immigrants, Lu was only the second Asian American in history to become a deputy secretary of any cabinet department.
●Pamela Melroy, National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Melroy is a former NASA astronaut, retired U.S. Air Force Colonel and test pilot and, as Commander of NASA’s STS-120 team, the second woman to command a space shuttle mission. She also served as former acting deputy associate administrator and in other senior roles in Federal Aviation Administration and as deputy director of the tactical technology office at Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Melroy is a veteran of Operation Just Cause and Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm, with over 200 combat and combat support hours.
●Geoffrey Roth, Department of Health and Human Services. Roth consults for Indian Health Programs in the Pacific Northwest. He was a presidential appointee to the Indian Health Service and helped implement the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. He also represented American Indian and Alaskan Natives on the team that helped implement the Affordable Care Act. Previously he was executive director of the National Council of Urban Indian Health.
●Shawn Skelly, Department of Defense. Skelly was former Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics; coordinator of the Department of Defense Warfighter Senior Integration Group; and Director of the Office of the Executive Secretariat at the U.S. Department of Transportation during the Obama-Biden administration. She served on active duty in the U.S. Navy for 20 years as a Naval Flight Officer, retiring with the rank of Commander. Skelly joined the Obama administration in 2013, as the first transgender veteran to be appointed by a President of the United States. In 2017, President Obama appointed her to serve as a Commissioner on the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service, which completed its work in September 2020.
●Ellen Stofan, National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Stofan is a former NASA Chief Scientist with more than twenty-five years’ experience in space-related organizations and a deep research background in planetary geology. She also served as Chief Scientist for the New Millennium Program at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Deputy Project Scientist for the Magellan mission to Venus. Dr. Stofan is currently Director of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum (the first woman to hold this position) and has served as Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum Council on the Future of Space Technologies.
●Karen Tamley, Department of Housing and Urban Development. Tamley has been a lifelong advocate for Americans with disabilities. After working as an advocate for nearly a decade, she served 14 years as commissioner of the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities in Chicago. Earlier this year, she became President and CEO of Access Living, the organization she worked for prior to her service with the Mayor’s Office. Tamley was also appointed by President Obama in 2016 to serve on the United States Access Board, which develops national accessibility guidelines and standards.
●Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Department of State. ●Thomas Greenfield is a 35-year veteran of the Foreign Service and one of the most senior African American diplomats. She was former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs ,where she led the development and management of U.S. policy toward sub-Saharan Africa, with a focus on economic empowerment, investment opportunities, peace and security, and democracy and governance. She also formerly served as the Director-General of the Foreign Service, leading the team in charge of 70,000 State Department personnel. Her foreign service career also included an ambassadorship to Liberia from 2008 to 2012.
●Kevin Washburn, Department of Interior. Washburn is dean at University of Iowa College of Law. Previously, he was a professor and served as dean at the University of New Mexico School of Law before he joined the Obama administration as assistant secretary of Indian Affairs. In that role, he was the highest ranking official in charge of federal Indian policy for the United States government, overseeing nearly 8,000 employees of the Bureaus of Indian Affairs and Indian Education.
●Geovette Washington, Department of Commerce. Washington serves as Senior Vice Chancellor and Chief Legal Officer at the University of Pittsburgh. She was general counsel and senior policy advisor for the Office of Management and Budget at the White House. Prior to joining OMB, Washington served as deputy general counsel for the U.S. Department of Commerce.
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