Obama Names Educational Leaders

From the November 19, 2008 issue of Politico

Obama Team Names Policy Group Leaders

ormer deputy National Security Adviser James Steinberg and former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Carol Browner were among a group of leaders of policy working groups announced by the Obama-Biden transition team Wednesday.

Full memo follows:

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, the Obama-Biden Transition Team announced leaders for a series of Policy Working Groups for the Presidential Transition.

The focus of the Policy Working Groups will be to develop the priority policy proposals and plans from the Obama Campaign for action during the Obama-Biden Administration. The Policy Working Groups will focus on the following areas: Economy, Education, Energy and Environment, Health Care, Immigration, National Security, and Technology, Innovation and Government Reform.

The list of Policy Working Group Leaders and their biographies are below:

Economic: Daniel K. Tarullo
Education: Linda Darling-Hammond
Energy and Environment: Carol M. Browner
Health Care: Senator Tom Daschle
Immigration: T. Alexander Aleinikoff, Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuéllar
National Security: James B. Steinberg, Dr. Susan E. Rice
Technology, Innovation and Government Reform: Sonal Shah, Julius Genachowski, Blair Levin

The Policy Working Group Leaders can also be viewed here.

ECONOMIC:
Daniel K. Tarullo is Professor of Law at Georgetown University. He teaches and writes in the areas of banking law, international economic regulation, and economic policymaking. From 1993 to 1998 he was, successively, Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs, Deputy Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, and Assistant to the President for International Economic Policy. From 1995 to 1998 he was also President Clinton’s personal representative to the G7/G8 group of industrialized nations. Prior to joining the Administration, he practiced law, served on the staff of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, and taught at Harvard Law School.

EDUCATION:
Linda Darling-Hammond
Linda Darling-Hammond is Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University where she has launched the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education and the School Redesign Network. Her research, teaching, and policy work focus on issues of school reform, teaching quality and educational equity. She is a former president of the American Educational Research Association and member of the executive board of the National Academy of Education. She has been a leader in the standards movement, chairing both the New York State Curriculum and Assessment Council as it adopted new standards and assessments for students and the Interstate New Teachers Support and Assessment Council (INTASC) as it developed new standards for teachers. From 1994-2001, she served as executive director of the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, a blue-ribbon panel whose 1996 report, What Matters Most: Teaching for America’s Future, was named in 2006 as one of the most influential affecting U.S. education, and Darling-Hammond was named one of the nation’s ten most influential people affecting educational policy. She received her BA from Yale University, magna cum laude, in 1973 and her Doctorate in Urban Education from Temple University in 1978. She began her career as a public school teacher.

ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT:
Carol M. Browner
Carol M. Browner is the longest serving Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency serving from 1993 to 2001. Prior to that, she served as Florida Secretary of the Environment. Browner is a founder and principal of The Albright Group LLC, a global strategy firm and of Albright Capital Management, an investment advisory firm that focuses on emerging markets. Browner serves as the chair of the National Audubon Society Board of Directors, and sits on the Board of Directors of APX, the Alliance for Climate Protection, the Center for American Progress and the League of Conservation Voters.

HEALTH CARE:
Senator Tom Daschle
Currently, Senator Tom Daschle is an advisor to the law firm of Alston and Bird, where he provides strategic advice on public policy issues such as climate change, energy, health care, trade, financial services, and telecommunications. He is also a Distinguished Fellow at the Center for American Progress, a Visiting Professor at Georgetown University and a public speaker. In 2007, he joined with former Majority Leaders George Mitchell, Bob Dole, and Howard Baker to create the Bipartisan Policy Center, an organization dedicated to finding common ground on some of the pressing public policy challenges of our time. He is also Co-Chair of the ONE Vote ’08 Campaign, along with former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, to address health and poverty in the developing world in a more aggressive and successful way.

Daschle was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1978, serving eight years. In 1986, Daschle was elected to the U.S. Senate. Two years later he became the first Co-Chairman of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee and the first South Dakotan to be elected to a leadership position in the U.S. Congress. In 1994, Daschle was elected by his colleagues as their Democratic Leader. Daschle is one of the longest-serving Senate Democratic Leaders in history and the only one to serve twice as both Majority and Minority Leader.

IMMIGRATION:
T. Alexander Aleinikoff
T. Alexander Aleinikoff has been Dean of the Georgetown University Law Center and Executive Vice President of Georgetown University since July 2004. He has been a member of the Georgetown faculty since 1997. Dean Aleinikoff served as General Counsel and Executive Associate Commissioner for Programs at the Immigration and Naturalization Service for several years during the Clinton Administration. From 1997 to 2004 he was a Senior Associate at the Migration Policy Institute, where he now serves on the Board of Trustees. He has written widely on immigration, refugee and citizenship law and constitutional law. Dean Aleinikoff is a graduate of Swarthmore College and Yale Law School.

Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuéllar
Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar is Professor and Deane F. Johnson Faculty Scholar at Stanford Law School. His work focuses on how organizations manage complex regulatory, migration, international security, and criminal justice problems. During the Clinton Administration he served at Treasury as Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary for Enforcement, where he worked on countering domestic and international financial crime, improving border coordination, and enhancing anti-corruption measures. He has served on the boards of numerous organizations, including Asylum Access and the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation. He has testified before Congress on immigration policy and separation of powers, and was appointed to the Silicon Valley Blue Ribbon Task Force on Aviation Security. He holds a J.D. from Yale Law School and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute.

NATIONAL SECURITY:
James B. Steinberg
James B. Steinberg is dean of the LBJ School of Public Affairs (2006-present) and is a former Deputy National Security Advisor to President Clinton (1996-2000). His previous positions include vice president and director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution (2001-2005), director of the Policy Planning Staff (1994-1996) and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Regional Analysis in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (1993-1994) at the U.S. Department of State. He is the author of and contributor to many books on foreign policy and national security topics, including, most recently, with Kurt Campbell, Difficult Transitions: Foreign Policy Troubles at the Outset of Power.

Dr. Susan E. Rice
Dr. Susan E. Rice served most recently as a Senior Foreign Policy Advisor to the Obama for America campaign while on leave from the Brookings Institution where she is a Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy and Global Economy and Development Programs. Rice currently serves on the Obama-Biden Transition Project Advisory Board. From 1997-2001, she was U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. Prior to that, Rice served in the White House at the National Security Council as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs and as Director for International Organizations and Peacekeeping. Rice was previously a management consultant at McKinsey and Company. She received her B.A. in History with Honors from Stanford University and her M.Phil. and D.Phil. (Ph.D.) degrees in International Relations from Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar.

TECHNOLOGY, INNOVATION & GOVERNMENT REFORM:
Blair Levin
Blair Levin is a Managing Director of Stifel Nicolaus and serves as the firm’s principal telecom, media and tech regulatory and strategy analyst. Prior to his work as an analyst, Mr. Levin served as Chief of Staff to Chairman Reed Hundt at the Federal Communications Commission from 1993 through 1997. Before joining the FCC, Levin was a partner in the North Carolina law firm of Parker Poe, Poe, Adams and Bernstein.

Sonal Shah
Sonal Shah heads Google.org’s global development efforts. Prior to joining Google, she was Vice President at Goldman, Sachs and Co. developing and implementing the firm’s environmental policy. She is also the co-founder of Indicorps, a U.S.-based non-profit organization offering one-year fellowships Indian-Americans to work on development projects in India. Sonal also worked at the Center for American Progress on trade, outsourcing and post conflict issues and the Center for Global Development on development policy issues. Sonal worked at the Department of Treasury from 1995-2002 on various economic issues and regions of the world, including Bosnia, Kosovo, the Asian crisis and sub-Saharan Africa. During that time she also worked at the National Security Council from 1998-1999. Sonal received her BA in economics from the University of Chicago and her MA in economics from Duke University. She is on the Obama-Biden Transition Project Advisory Board.

Julius Genachowski
Julius Genachowski is co-founder of Rock Creek Ventures and LaunchBox Digital, a special advisor at General Atlantic, and a member of various boards of directors and advisors. From 1997 to 2005, he was a senior executive at IAC/InterActiveCorp, where his roles included Chief of Business Operations, General Counsel, and a member of the Office of the Chairman. Genachowski served at the Federal Communications Commission from 1994 to 1997, including as Chief Counsel to the Chairman. >From 1991 to 1994 he served as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter, to U.S. Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. (ret.), and to Chief Judge Abner J. Mikva of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He worked in Congress from 1985 to 1988, for Sen. Charles E. Schumer (then a U.S. Representative), and for the joint select committe on the Iran-Contra Affair. He is a on the Obama-Biden Transition Project Advisory Board.



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