Jilani comes from a family of public servants; his father was a Public Service Commission officer, one brother was chief secretary of Punjab; an uncle recently stepped down as chief justice of Pakistan and a cousin, Yousuf Raza Gilani, was the country’s prime minister from 2008 to 2012. Jilani’s posting to the United States is somewhat of a rarity; Pakistan’s envoys to Washington are usually political appointees.   read more

McMillan began a long career at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) in the San Francisco Bay area. She started as an associate planner and was named a senior planner in 1988. In 1993, McMillan became manager of finance and was elevated to become manager for finance and external affairs in 1999. After concentration on managing funding, she was named deputy executive director for policy in 2001, a role she held until moving to Washington.   read more

His positions at NIST have included chief of the Analytical Chemistry Division, director of the Chemical Science and Technology Laboratory, associate director of laboratory programs and director of the Material Measurement Laboratory. May’s specialty is analytical chemistry research. He helped establish the pollution baseline for Prince William Sound before the opening of the Alaska Pipeline and has also worked on protocols for environmental sample collection for trace organic analysis.   read more

Hart returned to the NTSB as a member in 2009 and was named the board’s vice chairman the same year and has served there since. He has represented the board on investigations including the 2010 San Bruno gas pipeline explosion, a casino bus crash, and recently was the face of the NTSB during the investigation into the 2013 Asiana airliner crash in San Francisco and several oil tank car accidents.   read more

On July 22, 2014, President Barack Obama nominated Jonodev Osceola Chaudhuri to be chairman of the three-member National Indian Gaming Commission. Chaudhuri has been a member of the commission since September 2013 and its acting chairman since October. In 2012, Chaudhuri was named senior counselor to the assistant secretary for Indian affairs in the Department of the Interior, where he served for a year before moving to the gaming board.   read more

The Senate, charged with approving President Barack Obama’s ambassadorial choices, is sitting on 34 such nominations, as well as 20 political appointments of people selected to lead American embassies around the world. One area of particular concern is Africa, which has a 20% vacancy rate in its U.S. embassies. Nine career Foreign Service officers are awaiting confirmations for those jobs.   read more

O’Malley, an attorney in St. Louis, is a longtime supporter of President Barack Obama. O’Malley has strong Irish roots; all four of his grandparents were born in Westport, County Mayo, Ireland. Until being nominated for the Dublin post, O’Malley held dual Irish and American citizenship, but gave up his Irish citizenship to accept the ambassadorial position.   read more

For the past 65 years presidents of both parties have continued a tradition started by Harry Truman—appointing a woman as U.S. Treasurer. No, not the Secretary of the Treasury; white men appear to have a lock on that job. The treasurer is responsible for “oversight” of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and of the U.S. gold reserves in Fort Knox. And her signature appears on the paper currency printed during her term.   read more

In July 2015, Dr. David J. Skorton, who is currently president of Cornell University, will become the 13th secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. He has said he hopes to keep his medical license current when he becomes secretary of the Smithsonian.   read more

Most of Robinson’s career has been spent in Latin America. In 2009, Robinson was sent to Guatemala as deputy chief of mission, serving there until 2011. He then returned to Washington as deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, beginning in June 2011.   read more

On September 25, 2012, President Barack Obama made Dr. Rodney C. Ewing chairman of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, a panel on which Ewing has sat since July 2011. Obama reaffirmed Ewing’s position on June 13, 2014. The Review Board conducts scientific and technical assessments of the Department of Energy’s activities to dispose of the nation’s commercial spent nuclear fuel and defense high-level radioactive waste.   read more

It would be the first ambassadorial posting for Mustard and one of the few for diplomats from the USDA. In his testimony, he noted that U.S. relations with Turkmenistan have been “constrained by significant human-rights concerns because the government seeks to exert control over the lives of its citizens,” but he also pointed out that this hasn’t stopped Boeing and GE from experiencing “great success in the Turkmen market.”   read more

According to the report, “She advanced a theory integral to RedX product development, promoted a multi-step process the RedX product suite used to implement the theory, highlighted the results of field trials that used RedX products to demonstrate the efficacy of the theory and process, and featured a RedX sales slogan.” Dugan left her post in 2012 during the investigation and became an executive at Google.   read more

Hartley and Schlosstein have been active in Democratic politics. In the 2012 campaign, Hartley is credited with bundling at least $500,000, and possibly up to $1.4 million, for Obama’s re-election effort. In 2011 she and Schlosstein hosted a $71,600-per-couple fundraiser for Obama. She has also contributed to the campaigns of numerous Democratic Congressional candidates.   read more

When Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) confronted Bass with details of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s crackdowns on free speech, Bass proved reluctant to criticize Erdoğan. McCain asked, “Do you believe...that is a drift towards authoritarianism?” Finally, when McCain threatened to withhold Bass’s nomination if he didn’t get a direct answer, Bass conceded that “It’s a drift in that direction, yes.”   read more

In 1996, Osius was among the first U.S. diplomats to work in Vietnam since the end of the U.S. war there. The following year, he helped set up the U.S. consulate in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). While there, he travelled 1,200 miles by bicycle from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City. Osius told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the time is coming to consider lifting U.S. restrictions on arms sales to Vietnam, which currently buys most of its weaponry from Russia.   read more