Just a year after graduating, Robertson co-founded the Gerontology Institute at Oklahoma State University, of which he was director from February 1994 to June 2005. He also served as executive director of PartnerShips for Aging, the largest regional gerontology association in the U.S. Additionally, Robertson has served as the president of the National Association of States United for Aging & Disability (NASUAD), a leading authority on aging and disability.   read more

Day, who until late 2016 served as the co-chair of the RNC, has been nominated by President Trump to be the U.S. ambassador to Costa Rica. She has no diplomatic experience. But, like Trump, she has a history of media bashing. In 2012, the Republican presidential candidate lost the women’s vote for the sixth election in a row. Day then spent the next two years traveling around the U.S. encouraging women to vote Republican. She's such an enthusiastic Republican that she named her dog Reagan.   read more

Donald Trump has chosen another money man to lead the Navy. His nomination of Spencer was his second try at filling the job, after financier Philip Bilden decided not to serve because of the cost to his portfolio. Given Spencer’s wealth, it's not surprising it was reported that he “is also caught up in a mess of financial entanglements that have proved tricky to unwind.” Spencer had been VP of Spirit Airways before heading east to find his fortune on Wall Street, where he worked for 16 years.   read more

As the executive director of the African Affairs Bureau, Raynor wrote to the State Department inspector general regarding the tragic attack on the State Department compound in Benghazi, Libya. Raynor wrote that a federal law requiring the Department to hire foreign security based on the lowest cost bidder “often results in poorly paid and motivated guards,” which not only raises security risks but also “undercuts our Missions’ broader engagement in championing human rights.”   read more

At defense contractor Sanders, maker of military electronics, Ashooh became VP of government relations—a lobbyist. Lockheed spun off Sanders to BAE Systems, with Ashooh on board. He was later director of public affairs in BAE’s Electronic Warfare Systems division. Ashooh was a member of the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign and, as a congressional candidate, called for repeal of Obamacare and balancing the budget by eliminating funding for any federal entity that competed with private industry.   read more

Green supported the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, and co-founded the Faith-Based Caucus, which backed relaxing church-state separation so church-affiliated social programs could get federal money. Green supported several bills involving international health that President Trump now wants to cut or eliminate. He has also been president of the USAID-funded IRI, staffed and run mostly by Republicans, and criticized for promoting conservative political goals rather than democracy around the world.   read more

In 2006, Viana became an administrator at Eno Valley Elementary School in Durham, North Carolina, where he established a district-wide parent advisement committee to help ensure that low-income Latino children met academic standards. After two years in Durham, Viana moved on to the North Carolina Dept of Public Instruction, serving eight years as an administrator of the state’s Migrant Education Program, which helps migrant students learn despite the huge obstacles that migratory labor entails.   read more

Kazykhanov spent his entire career at the Kazakhstan Foreign Ministry. Sacha Baron Cohen's 2006 mock documentary, "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan," was banned in Kazakhstan. However, in 2012, Kazykhanov admitted that the film had actually boosted the tourism industry in his country, noting, “For us, it is a great victory. I am grateful to Borat, the main character of the movie, for tourists' keen interest to (come to) Kazakhstan.”   read more

During his tenure at the NLRB, Miscimarra, a Republican, has consistently sided with employers over employees and opposed the expansion of union rights. However, just five days before Donald Trump’s election, Miscimarra joined a unanimous NLRB opinion to force Trump’s Las Vegas hotel to recognize the Unite Here union after the hotel workers had voted to unionize. In 2005, Miscimarra joined the law firm of Morgan Lewis and Bockius, the same year that the firm began representing Trump.   read more

An educator by profession, Gilchrist effected a major career change in 2009 by accepting an offer to become an education officer at the Ministry of Education, where she was responsible for the security and administration of all external examinations from January to October 2009. She was soon promoted to chief education officer at the Ministry of Education, where she supervised educational processes in schools from October 2009 to September 2016.   read more

The appointment of McCance-Katz by President Trump drew criticism from Republican Rep. Tim Murphy: “While she was serving at SAMHSA, there were questionable hiring practices...an anti-medical approach to serious mental illness and substance abuse treatment and...the continued upward rise of suicide and substance abuse deaths.” McCance-Katz praised Trump’s election in a November article for National Review, calling it “an exciting turn of events for people afflicted with mental illness.”   read more

A former U.S. naval officer who worked on nuclear-powered submarines, Sullivan began his political career in 2008, running as a Republican for an Eastern Connecticut congressional seat. He called for an end to the Iraq War, but opposed setting a date for U.S. troop withdrawal. He also called for increased spending for renewable energy and nuclear power. He later ran for state senate, calling for budget cuts and privatizing some social service programs, but lost to 84-year-old Edith Prague.   read more

From 2007 to 2010, Morrow served as FMS assistant commissioner of federal finance, responsible for managing nearly $3.2 trillion in annual federal revenue collections. From 2010 to 2012, she served as FMS assistant commissioner of payment management and chief disbursing officer, responsible for more than 1.2 billion payments each year, including tax refunds and Social Security, veterans’ benefits, railroad retirement, and civil service retirement payments.   read more

In 2014, Wolf campaigned in the contest for the Pennsylvania statehouse. Although a relative unknown, he won a four-way Democratic primary and ended up winning the general election with 54.9% of the vote, turning out deeply unpopular incumbent Tom Corbett (R). Among Wolf’s moves as governor were a ban on fracking in state parks and a moratorium on the death penalty. He has since proposed increased funding for Pennsylvania schools and more support for fighting the opioid epidemic in his state.   read more

In 2014, Coats fought for tough sanctions against Russia after its invasion and annexation of Crimea. He was a member of the secretive The Fellowship (or The Family), a Christian group that includes many conservative lawmakers and has promoted a fundamentalist agenda in the U.S. and around the world, including anti-gay laws in African countries. Coats fought the idea of gays serving openly in the U.S. military in the 1990s and once called same-sex marriage a sign of “deep moral confusion.”   read more

She went to Bulgaria as ambassador in August 2008. Her stay there only lasted a year, however. In 2009, she was called back to Washington by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to serve as principal deputy assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs. Some of McEldowney’s State Department cables, as released by WikiLeaks, are refreshingly blunt, although they were not so well-received by members of the governments of Turkey and Bulgaria.   read more