Trying to help fix Healthcare.gov after its shaky rollout, Slavitt tried to create an account for himself, but it didn’t work. He joined CMS in 2014 as Principal Deputy Administrator, having to get an “ethics waiver” from the Obama administration. As he awaits confirmation, Slavitt has taken criticism from Sen. Orrin Hatch for conflicts of interest that his appointment would create. The liberal group Public Citizen also has questioned the appropriateness of the nomination.   read more

Breysse joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins University in 1986 and remained there until joining the federal government. His research there included a study on smoking in cars, which found that smoking in autos left twice the levels of secondhand smoke than in bars. He directed a secondhand smoke exposure assessment laboratory at Johns Hopkins and conducted studies in the field around the world.   read more

While stationed in Manila, the embassy began work on an expansion of its office space. During the construction, unexploded ordnance from World War II was found on the construction site. Each time a piece was found, Riley told State magazine, “We thought that would be the last of it but, no, there was always more. . . . Our employees had worked there for more than 60 years and lived there for more than 50 years, unconscious of the potential danger.”   read more

His specialties were emerging infectious diseases, food safety and responses to complex outbreaks. In 2001, he was one of CDC’s point men on the anthrax outbreak a month after the 9/11 attacks. In 2003, Ostroff took a similar role during the monkeypox outbreak that arose from exotic animals being brought into the United States. In 2014, he used his position to urge pregnant women to eat more non-mercury-tainted fish and in 2015 he began the process of banning trans fats in U.S. processed foods.   read more

In 2005 McSwain was made Deputy Director of IHS. Beginning in 2007, he served as the agency’s Acting Director and the following year was confirmed by the Senate as Director. During his tenure, he came under fire from Congress for mismanagement of the agency. One example was a Government Accountability Office investigation that showed almost $16 million worth of equipment and other types of property could not be accounted for. McSwain claimed the charges were overblown.   read more

In 2008, Wachino served on the OMB transition team for the incoming Obama administration. She joined the administration shortly thereafter as Director of the Children and Adults Health Programs Group in the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services. There, she helped with the initial rollout of the Affordable Care Act services to Medicaid recipients. In 2013, Wachino stepped away from government service to be a Senior Fellow at NORC at the University of Chicago.   read more

In 1989 Kronick co-wrote a paper outlining a proposal for health-care reform not unlike the one the U.S. ended up with 20 years later, including the continued use of private companies combined with government-paid health care for the poor. In 1999, Kronick co-authored an article with his wife about why some cities adopted municipal reform while others didn’t. Kronick in 2006 co-authored a statistical study that found that married people tend to live longer than single or divorced people.   read more

Swartz Taglialatela’s path to running an embassy has not been a traditional one. For one, she didn’t join the State Department right out of college. After leaving Virginia Tech, she became a management analyst at the General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office). She moved over to the State Department in 1979, but did similar work as an audit-qualified inspector and special assistant in the Office of the Inspector General.   read more

Mhura was arrested along with 11 others suspected of plotting the coup in March 2013. His name was later dropped from the list of those charged. He took on the defense of some of those implicated in Malawi’s “Cashgate” scandal in which officials in Banda’s government and others were accused of money laundering. There is some speculation that Mhura’s appointment to Washington was a way to delay the Cashgate trials.   read more

Early in his Washington tenure, Mader was the IRS security specialist during a time when the agency came under fire because its employees were found to be looking at tax returns of celebrities and others they had no business viewing. He subsequently became a key figure in a fundamental IRS reorganization. That change resulted in the removal of several layers of management and caused the agency to move from a regionally based organization to one with customer-oriented divisions.   read more

Bodde returned to Nepal as ambassador in 2012. While there, he worked to build relationships with Nepal’s young people. While Bodde’s confirmation to the Nepal post was fairly routine, his next hearings might be more difficult. Republicans who now control the Senate may take the opportunity to bring up the 2012 attack on the Benghazi consulate in which a previous U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans died.   read more

Luli-Faber is from Shkodër, Albania, and was educated at the University of Tirana in her home country. In the mid-1990s, she studied for her master’s degree at the Norwegian School of Management in Oslo, but completed it at the Marin Barleti University in Albania. From 1995 to 2000, Luli-Faber worked for Deloitte & Touche in Tirana and in Prague.   read more

Cobert took over when Director Katherine Archuleta quit under fire because of two massive data breaches involving 22 million people, including federal employees and those on whom background checks had been done. (Cobert was one of those whose personal data was stolen.) In 2013 as OMB's deputy director, she urged changes in federal hiring practices, including considering the hiring of younger employees for shorter terms and putting hiring in the hands of the line departments.   read more

Ebert-Gray was brought home in 2009 to serve as Director of the Office of Overseas Employment. There, she coordinated such things as the hiring of local staff, setting pay scales within the prevailing pay structure for that location. Since 2011, she has been a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of Administration. Ebert-Gray has been working in logistics management, particularly the handover of facilities in Iraq from the Department of Defense to the State Department.   read more

In 2002, she and another prosecutor used the federal racketeering laws (RICO) to convict 15 pimps who targeted children aged 12 to 17. One of her most prominent was the successful prosecution of pro wrestler Harrison Norris Jr., aka “Hardbody Harrison,” who kept eight women as sex slaves in his Georgia home, forcing them into prostitution. She also has worked with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in the development of a database for tracking human trafficking prosecutions.   read more

In Algiers, his task included trying to convince Muslim religious leaders to publicly condemn acts of terrorism. From his post there, he also warned that the U.S. had intercepted a letter from Ayman al-Zawahiri to Abu al-Zarqawi that outlined Al-Qaeda’s plans to turn Iraq into their base for overthrowing moderate regimes in the region and establish a caliphate. In Cairo, Sievers found himself having to do such things as deny the existence of a plot by the U.S. against the Egyptian government.   read more