The Washington Post reported Sunday that President Joe Biden is likely to choose his former Covid-tsar Jeff Zientz as the next White House Chief of Staff.
In the most significant White House personnel change of the past two years, Ron Crane, a Biden aide of 30 years and already the longest serving chief of staff to a Democratic president, is expected to step down. Biden’s State of the Union address on May 7.
Zients, 56, has spent most of his life as a top private sector executive. His first foray into government was during the Barack Obama administration. There, he served as the U.S. Chief Operating Officer and Deputy Director of Management for the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), responsible for reducing and streamlining government spending. He also served as acting director of OMB. He also served on the board of the National Economic Council and chaired the President’s Management Advisory Board.
Zients returned to the private sector in 2017, serving on Facebook’s board of directors and chairing its audit and risk oversight committee.
Zientz then worked on Biden’s transition team in 2020 before being appointed Covid-19 response coordinator at the White House, devising new protocols for managing the pandemic and helping accelerate America’s immunization push. played an important role. He resigned in his April 2022. In his farewell note, Biden said there is no one better than Zients when it comes to delivering results. “Jeff has taken decades of management to develop and execute plans to build the infrastructure needed to provide billions of Americans with vaccines, tests, treatments and masks. Leveraging experience…he is a service man and a professional manager.I will miss his advice and appreciate his service.” 19 succeeded Zients as coordinator.
Zients is known to share a close relationship with Klain, who chose him to oversee personnel changes that typically take place two years after a president’s term. But while Klein was a veteran political operative who played a key role in guiding Biden’s signature bill through the U.S. Congress over the past two years, Zientz’s strengths lie in the areas of operations and management.
Zients’ CNN profile suggests that President Biden’s next stretch will focus on implementing legislation enacted during his first two years, with Zients viewed internally as a “primary enforcer.” It is done.
From its position as Covid-19 Coordinator for 2021 and 2022, Zients will work with Indian stakeholders both in terms of providing support and collaborating on a vaccine during India’s second Covid-19 wave. was closely involved. In his new role, he is expected to be another voice of support for closer US-India ties.
