President Biden Announces More Key Administration Nominations

by Joseph Robinette Biden

WASHINGTON – Today, President Joe Biden announced his intent to nominate the following 10 individuals to serve on key Administration boards and commissions.

• Deirdre Hamilton for Member, National Mediation Board
• Cynthia Hogan for Member, Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service
• Catherine McLaughlin for Member, Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service
• Shirley Sagawa for Member, Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service
• Evelyn M. Fujimoto for Member, Board of Directors of the National Institute of Building Sciences
• Lori Peek for Member, Board of Directors of the National Institute of Building Sciences
• Beth Geer for Member, Board of Directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority
• Robert Klein for Member, Board of Directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority
• Kimberly Lewis for Member, Board of Directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority
• Michelle Moore for Member, Board of Directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority

Deirdre Hamilton, Nominee for Member of the National Mediation Board

Deirdre Hamilton has worked as a staff attorney at the International Brotherhood of Teamsters since 2014, working exclusively with the IBT’s Airline Division. At the IBT she has represented most of the crafts or classes within the airline industry- including pilots, flight attendants, technicians, and aircraft cleaners- at both commercial and cargo air carriers. Before that, she was a staff attorney at the Association of Flight Attendants for twelve years. In her career, she has handled a wide range of legal matters including National Mediation Board elections and mediation, collective bargaining support, contract enforcement, and litigation of Railway Labor Act issues. She began her career as a legal fellow in the General Counsel’s office at the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

Since 2014, Hamilton has served as a panelist at meetings of the American Bar Association’s Labor and Employment Law Committee and Railway and Airline Labor Law Committee. Hamilton also serves as a Senior Editor for the ABA Railway Labor Act Treatise, Fourth Edition.

Hamilton received her J.D. from the University of Michigan in 2000 and her B.A. from Oberlin College.

Cynthia Hogan, Nominee for Member of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service

Cynthia was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1979, she graduated from Oberlin College with a BA in art history. In 1984, she received a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law, where she served as Notes Editor of The Virginia Law Review. She served in 1984-85 as a Law Clerk to the Honorable Edward Cahn, United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, and worked as an associate at the Washington, DC law firm, Williams & Connolly, from 1985-1991.

In 1991, Hogan joined the staff of United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, serving as counsel, staff director, and then chief counsel until 1996. From 2009 to 2013, Cynthia served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Counsel to the Vice President of the United States of America. In 2014, Hogan joined the National Football League as Senior Vice President of Public Policy. In 2016, she joined Apple as Vice President for Public Policy and Government Affairs for the Americas. She resigned from Apple in 2020. In April 2020, then candidate Joe Biden asked Hogan to serve on a committee he formed to assist in the selection of a Vice Presidential candidate. Hogan is married and has two children.

Catherine McLaughlin, Nominee for Member of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service

Catherine McLaughlin serves as the founding Executive Director of the Biden Institute at the University of Delaware. The Institute, established in 2017, brings students together with accomplished, respected practitioners from a broad diversity of backgrounds and a wide range of policy fields in order to equip aspiring public servants to elevate civil discourse and take on pressing policy challenges facing our nation.

Prior to joining the Biden Institute, McLaughlin served as the Executive Director of Harvard University’s Institute of Politics (IOP) for 22 years, where she oversaw all programming including the JFK Jr Forum, the resident and visiting fellows program, and national conferences for new-elected mayors and members of Congress. McLaughlin created a national consortium of IOP-like institutions that brought together students from across the country annually to identify ways to engage college and university students in the political process. She also co-founded the IOP’s Biannual Youth Survey on Politics and Public Public Service. She previously served as Tour Manager for the Boston-based band New Kids on the Block and as director of the Office of Alumni Affairs and coordinator in the Press and Public Liaison Offices at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. McLaughlin has her B.A. from Saint Anselm College, where she currently serves as a member of the board of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics.

Shirley Sagawa, Nominee for Member of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and Community Service

Shirley Sagawa is the former CEO of Service Year Alliance and an architect of AmeriCorps. Over the last three decades, she has developed innovative social and education policy, authored groundbreaking reports, and advised national organizations and foundations on strategy. As a partner with sagawa/jospin, she played strategic roles in the creation of America Forward, Cities of Service, Service Year Exchange, and the Presidio Institute Fellows Program.

She has served as a presidential appointee in both Democratic and Republican Administration. She served as First Lady Hillary Clinton’s policy assistant and deputy chief of staff, and helped lead the start up of the Corporation for National and Community Service for President Bill Clinton. For President George H. W. Bush, she served as first vice chair of the Commission on National and Community Service, authorized under the National and Community Service Act of 1990, which she drafted and negotiated as a Chief Counsel for Youth Policy on the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee. A Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, Sagawa is author of three books, including The American Way to Change and The Charismatic Organization. She holds degrees from Harvard Law School, London School of Economics, and Smith College.

Evelyn M. Fujimoto, Nominee for Member of the Board of Directors of the National Institute of Building Sciences

Evelyn Fujimoto is an award-winning design professional with a portfolio of over nine million square feet of building interiors spanning North American, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Evelyn’s professional accreditations attest to her expertise in the design and delivery of interior spaces, as well as a commitment to sustainability and resilience. Her projects have received industry recognition for their design excellence including adherence to sustainable design practices, value creation for the business community, and demonstration of leading engineering and construction methods. Most of her projects have been in the workplace sector, but also include residential, retail, hospitality, and civic/institutional projects. In her role as design director for one of the world’s leading design firms, some of her most significant projects include the London Stock Exchange in the United Kingdom, the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange in the United Arab Emirates, BHP Headquarters in Houston, Texas, and the Travis County Civil and Family Courts Facilities (TCCFCF) in Austin, Texas.

As a daughter and granddaughter of immigrants, Fujimoto is acutely aware of the opportunities that have been afforded in her lifetime. Living and working abroad, working across multiple cultures, she has learned to embrace diverse views and positions to listen, learn, and bridge divided opinions to achieve consensus. She is an advocate for a more holistic approach to urban planning and more active engagement with a broad section of local communities in setting and reaching community goals. Fujimoto believes the AEC (architecture, engineering, construction) professions, the private sector, and government are in a unique position to improve peoples’ lives. She looks forward to working with partners from across the industry to make that happen.

Lori Peek, Nominee for Member of the Board of Directors of the National Institute of Building Sciences

Lori Peek is Director of the Natural Hazards Center and Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Colorado Boulder. She studies marginalized populations in disaster and is author of Behind the Backlash: Muslim Americans after 9/11, co-editor of Displaced: Life in the Katrina Diaspora, and co-author of Children of Katrina. Peek helped develop school safety guidance for the nation, which resulted in the publication of FEMA P-1000, Safer, Stronger, Smarter: A Guide to Improving School Natural Hazard Safety.

Peek has conducted field investigations in the aftermath of several major disasters. She is the principal investigator for the National Science Foundation-funded CONVERGE facility, which is dedicated to improving research coordination and advancing the ethical conduct and scientific rigor of disaster research. She also leads the Social Science Extreme Events Research (SSEER) and Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Extreme Events Research (ISEEER) networks. She is past President of the International Sociological Association Research Committee on Disasters and past Chair of the American Sociological Association Section on Environmental Sociology. She is a Board Member for the Bill Anderson Fund, which is an initiative dedicated to increasing the number of persons of color in hazards mitigation and disaster research. Peek received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Colorado Boulder in 2005.

Beth Geer, Nominee for Member of the Board of Directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority

Beth Prichard Geer is Chief of Staff to former Vice President Al Gore and serves as a member of Nashville Mayor John Cooper’s Sustainability Advisory Committee. Geer has extensive policy and outreach experience on issues including climate change, environmental justice, and regenerative agriculture. She has served in senior roles in the Clinton-Gore White House, Department of Labor, and United States Senate. As a native of rural Tennessee, she graduated with honors from Middle Tennessee State University and earned the Public Leadership Executive Certificate from the Harvard Kennedy School Senior Managers in Government program. She resides in Brentwood, Tennessee with her husband, Dr. John Geer.

Robert Klein, Nominee for Member of the Board of Directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority

Robert P. Klein is a lifelong resident of Chattanooga having attending Hamilton County public schools graduating from Tyner High School, where he was a member of the National Honor Society and National Beta Club. He also attended the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Klein served in the Tennessee Army National Guard where received an Honorable Discharge.

He begin his professional career at the Chattanooga Gas Company before continuing at the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga (now EPB) where he worked in the Overhead Line Department. He completed the Joint Lineman Apprenticeship Program becoming a Journeyman Lineman in 1982. He furthered his career by becoming a Line Foreman supervising the building and maintaining of the power distribution system. Klein took a leave of absence with EBP to work with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local Union 175 and was appointed in 1998 as an International Representative with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW). In 2003 he was appointed as the International Vice President of the IBEW Tenth District, which consists of Tennessee, Arkansas, North and South Carolina. He was re-elected as Vice President at the 37th and 38th IBEW International Conventions.

During his career Klein has served on the Executive Committee and Board of Directors of the United Way of Chattanooga, Board of Directors for the Tennessee Labor-Management Conference, Board of Directors for the Tennessee Safety and Health Congress, sat on the Tennessee Valley Trades and Labor Council, where is served as President for fourteen (14) years. He also sat on the Tennessee Valley Authority Labor -Management Committee as well as on the Board of Directors for the Southeast Labor-Management Public Affairs Committee. Additionally, he was a Trustee for the IBEW-NECA Family Medical Healthcare Plan. He officially retired from EPB in 2011 and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers in 2015.

Klein, who is known as Bobby to his family, friends and colleagues attends Silverdale Baptist Church and still resides in Chattanooga with his wife, Sharon.

Kimberly Lewis, Nominee for Member of the Board of Directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority

Kimberly Caudle Lewis of Huntsville, Alabama, is the Chief Executive Officer of PROJECTSYZ, Inc., a business that provides services and products in the areas of engineering, logistics, technical services, manufacturing, and international foreign military sales. She leads a workforce that supports federal and commercial customers across several diverse subsidiaries and at locations across the US and around the world. Lewis has a 25-year career spanning business operations and management, technology, and federal government contacting.

A life-long resident of Madison County, Alabama, Lewis would later become the first black female elected as Board Chair of the Huntsville / Madison Chamber of Commerce and most recently, the first minority owner of North Alabama’s only locally owned broadcast television station, WTZT-TV.

Lewis’ previous career roles and studies in healthcare and information technology set the foundation for starting PROJECTXYZ and where she was previously involved in management of large-scale IT implementations and projects for large healthcare companies. She earned a degree in Computer Information Systems at John C. Calhoun State Community College.

Michelle Moore, Nominee for Member of the Board of Directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority

A social entrepreneur and former White House official with roots in rural Georgia, Michelle Moore is a purposeful leader with a passion for connecting clean energy with economic growth. Her passion for community power and getting good stuff done is rooted in her faith and the commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself.” Moore currently serves as CEO of Groundswell, a nonprofit that builds community power through community solar, clean energy, and resilience programs that share power, savings, and economic opportunity with more than four thousand families. Her accomplishments range from building the global green building movement as a senior executive with the U.S. Green Building Council to leading the sustainability and infrastructure delivery teams for the Obama Administration.

Moore got her start in sustainability in 1997 as Director of eBusiness for Interface Inc. in her hometown of LaGrange GA, where working for Ray Anderson showed her how to connect people, planet, and profitability and the pathway to “doing well by doing good.” Moore is married to Linwood Boswell, a local music mainstay, father of three, and community real estate agent in Richmond, Virginia.