President Biden Announces Key Nominees
WASHINGTON – Today, President Joe Biden announced his intent to nominate the following individuals to serve as key leaders in his Administration:
- Nelson W. Cunningham, Nominee for Deputy United States Trade Representative
- James R. Ives, Nominee to be Inspector General of the Department of the Treasury
- Stephen Ravas, Nominee to be Inspector General of the Corporation for National and Community Service
- Leonardo Martinez-Diaz, Nominee to be United States Executive Director of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
- Anne Marie Wagner, Nominee to be a Member of the Federal Labor Relations Authority
Also today, the White House will continue renominating candidates whose nominations were returned to the President at the end of the first session of the 118th Congress. Today’s transmission to the Senate will include 16 renominations. The White House will continue transmitting renominations to the Senate in the coming weeks and hopes the Senate will take action expeditiously.
Nelson W. Cunningham, Nominee for Deputy United States Trade Representative
Nelson W. Cunningham co-founded McLarty Associates in 1998 and helped lead the firm for 25 years until stepping away last year. Under Cunningham’s leadership, McLarty Associates developed into a firm with global reach and over one hundred employees and advisors in 20 countries around the world. Before 1998, Cunningham served in the Clinton White House as Special Advisor to the President on Western Hemisphere affairs and as General Counsel at the White House Office of Administration. He previously served as General Counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee, under then-Chairman Joseph R. Biden.
Before moving to Washington, Cunningham served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York from 1988 until 1994, and in 1984 he was a staffer on the successful Senate campaign of John Kerry.
Cunningham is active on foreign policy and political matters and frequently speaks to audiences in the United States and abroad. He is a frequent commentator on legal and political issues. He serves on numerous NGO boards, and is Vice Chair of the Business Council for International Understanding.
James R. Ives, Nominee to be Inspector General of the Department of the Treasury
James R. Ives is a career member of the Senior Executive Service who currently serves as the Principal Deputy Director of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the criminal investigative arm of the Department of Defense’s Office of Inspector General (OIG). Ives possesses over 31 years of combined oversight and law enforcement experience, to include 14 years of senior executive experience. Prior to accepting his current position, he served as the Department of Defense (DOD) OIG’s Deputy Inspector General for Overseas Contingency Operations. He also served as Assistant Inspector General for Investigations at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) OIG from 2015 through 2021. Before joining NASA OIG, he served with the DOD OIG for 22 years and held a variety of leadership positions. In 2019, Ives served on a detail assignment as Acting Inspector General of the U.S. Government Publishing Office. He also previously served as a special agent with the U.S. Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service, and a reserve special agent with the U.S. Coast Guard Investigative Service.
Ives is a graduate of Georgetown University, where he earned a Master of Policy Management degree, and the State University of New York’s College at Brockport, where he graduated summa cum laude with a B.S. degree in Criminal Justice. He is a 2017 graduate of Harvard University’s Senior Executives Fellows program. He is also an adjunct professorial lecturer at American University, and an adjunct professor at University of Maryland’s Global Campus. Ives resides with his wife and son in Northern Virginia.
Stephen Ravas, Nominee to be Inspector General of the Corporation for National and Community Service
Stephen Ravas joined the Corporation for National and Community Service (AmeriCorps) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) as Counsel to the Inspector General in August 2019. He served as Acting Deputy Inspector General from January 2022 to May 2023.
Prior to joining AmeriCorps OIG, Ravas served as Assistant Counsel to the Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security OIG. There, he was the lead attorney for investigative issues related to criminal procedure, law enforcement techniques, and the Special Agent Handbook, and participated in and provided legal counsel for multi-disciplinary investigations, audits, and inspections.
Ravas also served as Special Investigative Counsel for the Department of Commerce OIG, where he focused on administrative and ethics investigations and was detailed to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia as a Special Assistant United States Attorney (SAUSA). As a SAUSA, Ravas advised and directed federal agents in ongoing investigations, and represented the United States in federal district court and in grand jury proceedings.
Ravas began his legal career as a law clerk for the Hon. Paul D. Borman, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Michigan. He then entered the private practice of law, representing individuals and Fortune 500 companies in white-collar criminal defense matters, including alleged Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and criminal antitrust violations, and conducted internal investigations. He holds degrees from James Madison University and Wayne State University Law School, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the Wayne Law Review.
Leonardo Martinez-Diaz, Nominee to be United States Executive Director of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
Leonardo Martinez-Diaz is Managing Director for Climate Finance in the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate at the U.S. Department of State. Previously, he was Global Director of the Sustainable Finance Center at the World Resources Institute, a leading non-profit conducting research on climate and environment. During the Obama Administration, Martinez-Diaz served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy and Environment in the U.S. Department of the Treasury, as well as Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Western Hemisphere. Prior to that, he served as Director of the Office of Policy at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
Before entering government, Martinez-Diaz was Fellow and Deputy Director of the Global Economy and Development Program at the Bookings Institution. He also served as an economist at the International Monetary Fund and was Director of the High-Level Commission on the Modernization of World Bank Group Governance. He is author, co-author, or editor of numerous books, most recently Building a Resilient Tomorrow: How to Prepare for the Coming Climate Disruption. He is also author of Globalizing in Hard Times: the Politics of Banking-Sector Opening in the Emerging World and co-editor, with Lael Brainard, of Brazil as an Economic Superpower? Understanding Brazil’s Changing Role in the Global Economy.
Martinez-Diaz specialized in International Political Economy, receiving a Masters degree and a Doctorate from the University of Oxford, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He graduated with honors from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, with degrees in Economics and Political Science and was a 1998 Truman Scholar. After his undergraduate years, he worked in Jakarta, Indonesia as a Luce Fellow where he conducted research on poverty reduction and trade.
Anne Marie Wagner, Nominee to be a Member of the Federal Labor Relations Authority
Anne Wagner has been Associate Special Counsel with the Office of Special Counsel since 2015. Prior to that, she served as Vice Chairman of the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) after being nominated for that position by President Obama and confirmed by the Senate in 2009. Wagner came to the MSPB after serving as General Counsel of the Personnel Appeals Board of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) where she had previously sat as a Board Member upon appointment by the U.S. Comptroller General. She began her career as a staff attorney with the General Services Administration, after which she went on to become an Assistant General Counsel for the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), AFL-CIO, the largest Federal sector labor organization. In her nearly 20 years with AFGE, she led precedent-setting litigation and handled cases arising under the full array of laws governing Federal employment.
Wagner graduated from the University of Notre Dame and received her Juris Doctor from George Washington University. She is a member of the bar in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Illinois and is admitted to practice before various Federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court.
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