WASHINGTON - Today, President Joe Biden announced his intent to nominate the following individuals to serve as key leaders in his administration:
- David Crane, Nominee for Under Secretary for Infrastructure, U.S. Department of Energy
- Richard Weiner, Nominee for Director of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
- Colleen Joy Shogan, Nominee for Archivist of the United States
- Robert Harley Shriver, Nominee for Deputy Director of the Office of Personnel Management
- Bijan Sabet, Nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Czech Republic
- Eric W. Kneedler, Nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Republic of Rwanda
- Elizabeth Rood, Nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Turkmenistan
- Alvin Brown, Nominee for Member of the National Transportation Safety Board
David Crane, Nominee for Under Secretary for Infrastructure, U.S. Department of Energy
David Crane is currently the CEO at Climate Real Impact Solutions and serves on the boards of Heliogen, an AI-driven concentrated solar energy company, and Source Global, a privately-held sustainable water technology company. He also serves on the boards of directors of JERA, a power generation joint venture between Tokyo Electric, Chubu Electric, and Tata Steel, the global steel company headquartered in Mumbai. Crane is a leading business voice in the field of sustainability, clean energy, and climate change. He serves on the not-for-profit boards of Elemental Excelerator, The Climate Group NA, as well as being a B Team Leader, where he chairs the B Team's Net Zero Initiative. Previously, Crane was CEO of NRG. During his 12-year tenure, he took NRG from chapter 11 bankruptcy to a Fortune 200 company. Crane pioneered the yieldco asset class with the initial public offering of NRG Yield in July 2013. Crane also led NRG to the forefront of next-generation clean energy development through large scale initiatives in utility scale renewables (now Clearway), residential solar, post combustion carbon capture (Petra Nova), and DC fast charging (EVGO). Prior to NRG, Crane was CEO of International Power Plc, a UK-domiciled FTSE-100 company. Through his public advocacy and writings, including his seminal 2014 Letter to Shareholders, Crane has set forth the case for the leading role to be played by the private sector and transformational capitalism more generally in combating climate change, which he calls the "moral imperative of our time". Crane is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Princeton University.
Richard Weiner, Nominee for Director of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
Richard Weiner is a Senior Partner in the Washington and Brussels offices of the international law firm of Sidley Austin LLP. A member of the law firm's Global Arbitration, Trade, and Advocacy Group, he is one of the nation's leading international trade and investment lawyers. Dual qualified to practice law in both the European Union (EU) and the United States, Weiner has spent more than 30 years working on U.S.-E.U. trade and investment policy and market access issues, including ten years based in Brussels, where he was the founding managing partner of the Sidley Brussels office. Active in a variety of community, religious, and philanthropic organizations, Weiner is a first-generation American who is fluent in French.
Weiner served as national Co-Chair of Lawyers for Biden and as a member of the international economics working group during the 2020 Biden presidential campaign. He received a J.D. from Columbia Law School, a Masters of Philosophy from the University of Cambridge (UK), and an A.B. magna cum laude from Harvard College, where he was the student chairman of the John F. Kennedy Institute of Politics. He and his wife, Joann, a professor of economics at The George Washington University, have three adult children and reside in Washington, D.C.
Colleen Joy Shogan, Nominee for Archivist of the United States
Colleen Shogan is the Senior Vice President and Director of the David M. Rubenstein Center for White House History at the White House Historical Association. For the past decade, Shogan has taught a graduate course on politics and American history at Georgetown University as an Adjunct Lecturer in the Government Department. She also moderates the Emerging Governance Leaders seminar at the Aspen Institute. She served as the Vice Chair of the Women's Suffrage Centennial Commission, the bipartisan commission designated by Congress to commemorate the Nineteenth Amendment. Before her current position, Shogan worked for over a decade at the Library of Congress, serving in senior roles as the Assistant Deputy Librarian for Collections and Services and the Deputy Director of the Congressional Research Service. As a Library employee, she completed the Stennis Congressional Fellowship Program for the 112th Congress. Earlier in her career, Shogan worked as a Senate policy staffer, beginning her service through the American Political Science Association (APSA) Congressional Fellowship Program. Shogan served as the President of the National Capitol Area Political Science Association and was an elected member of the APSA Council.
Prior to her federal service, Shogan was an Assistant Professor of Government and Politics at George Mason University. Her research areas of focus include the American presidency, American political development, women in politics, and Congress. Shogan's Moral Rhetoric of American Presidents was named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the top five books written on presidential rhetoric. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University. A first-generation college graduate in her family, Shogan received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Boston College. Born and raised near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, she is a public-school graduate of Norwin Senior High School. Shogan currently resides in Arlington, Virginia.
Robert Harley Shriver, III, Nominee for Deputy Director of the Office of Personnel Management
Robert Harley Shriver, III, is currently the Associate Director for Employee Services at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM). In this role, he leads OPM's government-wide workforce policy team. His portfolio includes recruiting and hiring, pay and leave, strategic workforce planning, labor and employee relations, performance management, the Senior Executive Service, work-life, and the future of work. Shriver previously served at OPM during the Obama-Biden Administration as Deputy General Counsel for Policy, leading development and implementation of a number of government-wide initiatives, including expanding equality for LGBTQ+ Federal employees, improving Federal sector labor relations, and reforming the Federal hiring process. Shriver also served as OPM's Assistant Director for National Healthcare Operations, where he led the implementation of the Multi-State Plan program under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
In the years between his OPM stints, Shriver continued to work on ACA policy, operations, and IT. Rob served as the Director of Marketplace Innovation, Policy, and Operations at the District of Columbia Health Benefit Exchange Authority (HBX). He oversaw the complete rebuild of the Marketplace IT system and led the transition of all small business health coverage in the District to the HBX platform. He also negotiated and implemented a first-in-the-nation agreement with the Massachusetts Health Connector to share the HBX small business platform with Massachusetts small businesses. Shriver then worked for IdeaCrew, Inc., as the Vice President for Business Development, working with states to improve their health benefit exchange IT platforms. Shriver began his career as an Assistant Counsel for the National Treasury Employees Union, litigating cases on behalf of federal employees in the Federal judiciary. Shriver earned his B.A. in International Studies from Virginia Tech and his J.D. from George Washington University Law School.
Bijan Sabet, Nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Czech Republic
Bijan Sabet is Cofounder and a General Partner of Spark Capital, a venture capital firm that seeks out exceptional founders and the products they design. It manages in excess of six billion dollars across venture and venture growth funds. Throughout his career, Sabet has focused on helping technology entrepreneurs reach their potential and build important global companies. Prior to co-founding Spark Capital in 2005, he worked as a senior executive in numerous technology startup companies in Silicon Valley, California, and Massachusetts. In his role at Spark Capital, Sabet has led investments and served on the board of directors of early-stage startup companies that have transformed into global leaders. He led Spark's investment in Twitter in 2007 when there were just ten employees at the San Francisco based startup. His firm led early-stage investments in other iconic companies including Wayfair, Cruise Automotive, Oculus, Slack, Tumblr, Warby Parker, Discord, Stack Overflow, and others that have led to the creation of tens of thousands of new jobs. He serves on the Board of Trustees of Boston College, from which he earned a Bachelor of Science degree.
Eric W. Kneedler, Nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Republic of Rwanda
Eric Kneedler is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, class of Minister-Counselor. He currently serves as the Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, including formerly as Chargé d'Affaires, ad interim. Earlier, Kneedler was the Counselor for Political Affairs at the Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, and before that he served in the same role at the U.S. Embassy in Manila, Philippines. Previously, he served as the Deputy Political Counselor at the U.S Embassy in Bangkok, Thailand, and as a Political Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia. Among his other assignments, Kneedler was a Staff Assistant in the Bureau of European Affairs, a Senior Watch Officer in the State Department's Operations Center, and he also held positions at the U.S. Embassy in Port Louis, Mauritius, and at the U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong. Kneedler earned his Bachelor's degree from Pomona College, and his Master's degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. His foreign languages include Thai, Indonesian, and French.
Elizabeth Rood, Nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Turkmenistan
Elizabeth Rood, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service with the rank of Minister-Counselor, is currently the Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, Russia. Before that, she served as a Faculty Advisor at the U.S. Army War College. Previously, she served as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi, Georgia, much of that time as Chargé d'Affaires, ad interim. Prior to that, she was Political Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. Earlier, Rood directed the State Department's Office of Export Control Cooperation in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, the Office of Caucasus Affairs and Regional Conflicts in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, and the Foreign Service Institute's Stability Operations Division. Additionally, she served as Principal Officer at the U.S. Consulate General in Peshawar, Pakistan. In earlier assignments, she served as the State Department's representative on the U.S. Provincial Reconstruction Team in Paktika Province in southeastern Afghanistan, as well as Deputy to the U.S. Special Negotiator for the Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transnistria conflicts. Previous assignments include the Nonproliferation Bureau; the U.S. Mission to the International Organizations in Vienna, Austria; the U.S. Consulate General in Duesseldorf, Germany; and U.S. Embassies in Vienna, Austria, and Moscow, Russia. Rood is the recipient of numerous State Department performance awards, including three Senior Foreign Service Performance Awards. A native of North Carolina, she holds an M.A. from the University of Maryland and an A.B. from Randolph-Macon Woman's College. She speaks French, Russian, German, Pashto, Dari, and Georgian.
Alvin Brown, Nominee for Member of the National Transportation Safety Board
Alvin Brown served as Mayor of Jacksonville, Florida. Brown was the first-ever African-American elected Mayor of Jacksonville. Under his leadership, Jacksonville became one of America's leading cities for innovation and improving quality of life. Brown achieved numerous successes in Jacksonville with bold and collaborative approaches to many modern challenges. Brown began his career as a senior member of the White House leadership team under President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore. As Vice President Al Gore's Senior Advisor for Urban Policy, and Vice Chair of the White House Community Empowerment Board, Brown advised President Clinton and Vice President Gore on a wide range of domestic issues, including community revitalization, job creation, new business development, and affordable housing. As Executive Director of the White House Community Empowerment Board, Brown led the Administration's $4 billion community empowerment initiatives, including the Empowerment Zone/Enterprise Community programs. Brown also served as Senior Advisor to the late Commerce Secretary Ron Brown.
Brown was appointed President and CEO of The Willie Gary Classic, a foundation established to provide forums and scholarships to students. Brown served as Executive Director of the Bush/Clinton Katrina Interfaith Fund, a philanthropic $20 million fund to rebuild houses of worship throughout the Gulf Coast. Brown also served as an Executive in Residence at Jacksonville University's Davis School of Business, connecting students and faculty with best practices for building public-private partnerships. Brown worked as a meat-cutter at Winn-Dixie to become the first member of his family to graduate from college. Brown earned a Bachelor of Science degree and a Master's degree in Business Administration from Jacksonville University, and completed postgraduate work at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. He has received honorary doctorate degrees from Edward Waters College and Jacksonville University. Brown resides in Jacksonville with his wife and two sons.
