The Office of Personnel Management and Office of Management and Budget have announced the second cohort of the White House Leadership Development Program.
In an Oct. 28 blog post, OPM Acting Director Beth Cobert and OMB Senior Advisor Andrew Mayock introduced the 15 GS-15 employees chosen as fellows who will participate in a one-year rotation on high-visibility, cross-agency projects.
The 15 participants are:
- Bernadette Adams (Department of Education)
- Mark Ackiewicz (Department of Energy)
- Kelly Alexander (Department of Defense/Army)
- David Armitage (Department of State)
- Kathy Carson (General Services Administration)
- Carolyn Fleming-Williams (Federal Communications Commission)
- Robert Green (General Services Administration)
- Noreen Hecmanczuk (Department of Labor)
- Emily Kilcrease (Department of Commerce)
- Kevin McGhaw (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)
- Mimi Reilly (Department of Veterans Affairs)
- John Rigg (Department of Health and Human Services)
- Vicki Simons (Environmental Protection Agency)
- Eileen Vidrine (Department of Defense)
- Ken Wright (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)
"We want people to get new experiences that re-energize them, reinvigorate them," President Barack Obama said in December 2014 when introducing the program for future senior career executives. "We want the next generation of leaders to have the experience of solving problems and building relationships across the government."
Skills-, network- and collaboration-building efforts of the first cohort include promoting online resources for federally sponsored STEM education, launching the Core Federal Services Council to identify data-driven strategies to improve government customer services, and providing tools and practices to help federal employees work effectively with local communities.
The second cohort will build on the efforts to inform and enact enterprisewide mission-critical changes for high-performance government.
"One thing that we have to acknowledge is that our government often statutorily was organized for the needs of the 1930s or '40s or '60s," Obama said in 2014. "And too often, we get stovepiped at a time when we need people with different skill sets and different agencies to be working together."
More information on the newly selected fellows can be viewed on the White House's website.
