President Biden Announces Key Appointments to Boards and Commissions

WASHINGTON – Today, President Biden announced his intent to appoint the following individuals to serve in key roles:

• Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, Commission Member, Roosevelt Campobello International Park Commission
• Margaret Jane Kravchuk, Alternate Commission Member, Roosevelt Campobello International Park Commission
• Donald G. Soctomah, Alternate Commission Member, Roosevelt Campobello International Park Commission
• Anne J. Castle, United States Commissioner, Upper Colorado River Commission

Roosevelt Campobello International Park Commission

Roosevelt Campobello International Park serves as a memorial to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and a symbol of cooperation between the U.S. and Canada. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt’s summer home is preserved at the park in a combination indoor museum and outdoor nature park on Campobello Island, New Brunswick, Canada. The Park is administered by a Commission, which includes appointees from both the U.S. and Canada.

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, Commission Member, Roosevelt Campobello International Park Commission

Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (known as Anne) recently retired as Chief Executive Officer for Goodwill of Northern New England. She previously served as Vice President for Global Corporate Citizenship at The Boeing Company until 2011. In 2013, Roosevelt was presented with the Queen’s Commissioner’s Medal of Merit of the Province of Zeeland in The Netherlands in recognition of her work carrying forward the legacy and values of her grandparents. Currently, she chairs the Roosevelt Institute in New York and serves on the boards of Maine Grains, Inc., the Maine Community College System, and The Jim Browne Foundation. Roosevelt holds a Bachelor of Arts from Stanford University and a Master of Science in Library Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as several honorary doctorates. She lives in the State of Maine and dotes on her five grandchildren.

Margaret Jane Kravchuk, Alternate Commission Member, Roosevelt Campobello International Park Commission

Margaret Kravchuk graduated from the University of Maine School of Law in Portland, Maine in 1976. She moved to Bangor, Maine, and spent the next thirty-eight years as a prosecutor and judge in Maine. In 1985, Governor Joseph Brennan appointed her to the Maine District Court and Governor Jock McKernan elevated her to the Maine Superior Court five years later. Kravchuk became a United States Magistrate Judge in 2000, serving on the federal district court in Maine and working in Bangor and Portland. Kravchuk and her husband purchased a small summer home on Campobello Island in Wilsons Beach, New Brunswick for a weekend retreat in 2002. Since retirement from the federal bench in 2014, Kravchuk has spent summers on Campobello whenever possible. She volunteers at the Campobello Public Library in Welshpool, New Brunswick, working with others in the library gardens. Kravchuk also volunteers in the Calais and Machias state courts, assisting with mediations in cases involving small claims and landlord tenant disputes.

Donald G. Soctomah, Alternate Commission Member, Roosevelt Campobello International Park Commission

Donald Soctomah was born in Eastport, Maine across the Bay from the Roosevelt Campobello International Park in New Brunswick. Soctomah attended school at Pleasant Point Passamaquoddy’s two-room schoolhouse, and later attended other schools across the nation from Hawaii to Brunswick, Maine. He graduated from the University of Maine – Orono with his Bachelor of Science and worked with the U.S. Forest Service for three years. He later worked with the Passamaquoddy Forestry Department for ten years. Soctomah was elected to the Maine Legislature for eight years, serving as the Passamaquoddy Legislative Representative, and is currently working as the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer with the Passamaquoddy Tribe. He is the author of a children’s book titled Remember Me, which tells the story of a young Franklin D. Roosevelt and Passamaquoddy Chief Tomah Joseph on Campobello Island.

Upper Colorado River Commission

The Upper Colorado River Commission is an interstate water administrative agency established by action of five state legislatures and Congress with the enactment of the 1948 Upper Colorado River Basin Compact. The Commission’s role is to ensure the appropriate allocation of water from the Colorado River to the Upper Division States of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico and to ensure compliance with the 1922 Colorado River Compact to the Lower Division States of Nevada, Arizona, and California and to the Republic of Mexico.

Anne J. Castle, United States Commissioner, Upper Colorado River Commission

Anne Castle is a senior fellow at the Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment at the University of Colorado Law School, focusing on western water issues, including Colorado River policy and management. She is a founding member of the Water Policy Group. From 2009 to 2014, Castle was the Assistant Secretary for Water and Science at the U.S. Department of the Interior where she oversaw water and science policy for the Department and had responsibility for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Geological Survey. While at Interior, Castle spearheaded the Department’s WaterSMART program, which provides federal leadership and funding to support sustainable water supplies and launched the federal Open Water Data Initiative. Castle provided hands-on leadership on Colorado River issues and was the Chair of the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Work Group and a champion of Minute 319 between the U.S. and Mexico.

Castle practiced law for 28 years in Denver, Colorado with the Rocky Mountain-based law firm of Holland & Hart LLP, specializing in water issues. She chaired the law firm’s management committee and its natural resources law department. She serves on the boards of the Colorado Water Trust, Western Resource Advocates, Airborne Snow Observatories, Stanford University’s Water in the West program, and the Colorado River Water and Tribes Initiative, where she is co-leading an initiative on universal access to clean drinking water on Indian reservations.

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