Who’s who on Trump’s policy team
President-elect Donald Trump ‘s world is about to get a lot bigger.
The Trump presidential transition effort was a hypothetical exercise until Wednesday, but now is the epicenter of an enormous effort to staff and manage a new administration from the Cabinet level all the way down. That makes the relatively obscure officials who have been toiling away on policy and governance issues during the campaign key gatekeepers in Trump’s new Washington.
For many Republicans in Washington — especially those looking for jobs in the new administration — it hasn’t been clear exactly who to call to get on board with the new team. On Thursday, CNBC obtained an organizational chart being used by members of the Trump transition team detailing officials and volunteers handling each policy issue area.
Entitled “Current Agency Action Team,” the chart lists the Boston Consulting Group’s Ron Nicol as director of agency action. Nicol’s biography on the Boston Consulting Group website says he has worked on major business transformations for Fortune 50 companies, and that he “specializes in strategy development, organization transformation and delayering, customer discovery, merger and acquisition advice, and the development of major cost-reduction programs.” According to the chart, Nicol oversees six key issue areas: defense, national security, economic issues, domestic issues, management/budget, and “Agency Transform. & Innovation.”
Each of those issue areas has its own head, who will be key policy gatekeepers in Washington and who will be tasked with connecting with their current Obama administration counterparts to find out what’s going on inside each agency. Defense, for example, is led by Keith Kellogg, a former vice president at Cubic Corporation who earlier served as assistant Army chief of staff for operations.
The economic team is headed by Bill Walton, according to the document, apparently the same Walton who is chairman of Rappahannock Ventures, and David Malpass, an economist and former Reagan administration treasury official.
The economic team is divided into seven key areas, each with its own Trump team member. Treasury is run by Malpass and commerce is run by Ray Washburne, a Trump campaign fundraiser with ties to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. United States Trade Representative — an area of heightened importance given the prominence of Trump’s pledge to overhaul the U.S. approach to trade negotiations — is handled by Dan DiMicco, the former Nucor CEO.
Handling “Independent Financial Agencies,” presumably including the Securities and Exchange Commission as well as other financial regulators, is former SEC commissioner Paul Atkins, who is now the CEO of Patomak Global Partners.
Other key issue areas include national security, which is being led by former congressman Mike Rogers, and domestic issues, led by former Ohio official Ken Blackwell. Management/budget is being jointly handled by former Attorney General Ed Meese and Kay Coles James, a former director of the Office of Personnel Management.
Heading up the “Agency Transform. & Innovation” category are Beth Kaufman and Jonathan Beck.
CORRECTION: Keith Kellogg is a former vice president of Cubic Corporation
SOURCE:CNBC