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.

• Marty Walsh, Nominee for Governor, United States Postal Service
• Judy W. Chang, Nominee to be a Commissioner on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
• David Rosner, Nominee to be a Commissioner on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
• Lindsay S. See, Nominee to be a Commissioner on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
• Dana L. Banks, Nominee for U.S. Director of the African Development Bank 
• Elizabeth K. Horst, Nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka
• Joshua M. Harris, Nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria
• Troy Fitrell, Nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Republic of Seychelles
• Mary E. Daschbach, Nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Togolese Republic

Marty Walsh, Nominee for Governor, United States Postal Service

Marty Walsh has spent his life fighting for working people, as a labor leader, as a public official and as a private citizen. The son of Irish immigrants, Walsh was born and raised in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood. He started out by following in his father’s footsteps as a union construction worker, rising to become president of Laborers Local 223 in Boston and eventually head of the Greater Boston Building Trades Council, representing roughly 35,000 blue-collar workers on major construction projects across the region. In 1997, at the age of 29, Walsh won election to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, where he spent 16 years fighting for workers’ rights and good jobs. A champion for civil rights, he took a courageous early stand for marriage equality, supported communities of color, immigrants, seniors, veterans and he served as a State House leader on substance abuse treatment and recovery support. In 2013, he was elected Mayor of Boston, an office he served in for seven years. He led Boston through a period of historic success, growing the city’s economy, reducing crime, investing in schools and libraries, and ending chronic homelessness among veterans in the city. His groundbreaking policies included the nation’s first municipal Office of Recovery Services, paid parental leave for city employees, climate action and flood protection strategies, universal pre-kindergarten and free community college for low-income students.

In January 2021, President Joe Biden nominated Walsh to serve as the 29^th Secretary of Labor of the United States. After taking office during the COVID-19 pandemic, Walsh worked to support both laid-off and frontline workers. He subsequently leveraged the President’s historic economic recovery to strengthen worker power and improve job quality. During his two years in office, Walsh brought high-quality job training programs to millions of Americans, strengthened mental health support and access to treatment, and ushered in a historic surge in worker organizing. In February 2023, Walsh was appointed as the Executive Director of the National Hockey League Players’ Association, returning to his roots as a labor leader where he can continue to champion the importance of workers’ rights and the shared benefits of collective bargaining for all.

Walsh is someone who never forgets where he came from. A survivor of Burkitt’s Lymphoma as a child, he has fought to expand access to healthcare for all. Embracing recovery from alcoholism as a young man, he has always believed in compassion and second chances. Grateful for the role that unions played in helping his immigrant family join the middle class, he co-founded pre-apprenticeship programs that have become national models in helping people of color, women and justice-involved individuals enjoy successful construction careers as union members. He is a graduate of Boston College and shares his life with his long-time partner, Lorrie Higgins.

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

By statute, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission shall be composed of five members, with no more than three from the same political party. See is the nominee recommended by the Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Judy Chang, Nominee to be a Commissioner on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

Judy Chang is an energy economics and policy expert with more than 20 years of experience working with energy companies, trade associations, and governments on regulatory and financial issues, particularly as they relate to investment decisions in energy transmission, clean energy, and energy storage. She is the former Undersecretary of Energy and Climate Solutions for Massachusetts, a role in which she led efforts to set policies across the Commonwealth’s energy sector and align strategies and plans to meet legal requirements for climate change mitigation. Chang has presented and testified before US federal and state agencies and regulatory authorities in Canada on topics related to energy resource deployment; energy contracts; transmission planning, access, and pricing; and electricity market design. She has presented her work at industry conferences and academic seminars on energy and environmental policies. Chang has taught as an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and is a Senior Fellow at the Kennedy School’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. She serves as an ambassador for the US Department of Energy’s Clean Energy Education & Empowerment Initiative, which has the goal of advancing women’s leadership in clean energy and is a founding board member of New England Women in Energy and the Environment. She holds a Master of Public Policy from Harvard Kennedy School and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of California, Davis.

David Rosner, Nominee to be a Commissioner on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

David Rosner has fifteen years of experience across energy technologies, market design, and energy policy issues, both in and outside of government. He is an energy industry analyst for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, currently on detail to the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Democratic staff. During his time at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Rosner led efforts related to the Commission’s rulemaking on energy storage resources, electric transmission, offshore wind integration, fuel security, and natural gas-electric coordination.

Rosner was previously a senior policy advisor at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Policy and Systems Analysis and an associate director at the Bipartisan Policy Center’s energy project. Rosner holds degrees in economics and public policy.

Lindsay S. See, Nominee to be a Commissioner on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

Lindsay S. See is the Solicitor General of West Virginia, where she manages appellate and high-stakes litigation for the State of West Virginia. She also routinely appears before the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia and the Fourth Circuit, as well as other state and federal courts. In addition to managing West Virginia’s civil and criminal appellate dockets, her work focuses on regulatory and administrative law matters, and she leads and works with multi-state coalitions on a variety of national issues. After law school summers working for an anti-trafficking NGO and the Department of Justice’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, she now deeply appreciates the opportunity to be part of her office’s work in child protection and foster care related litigation. 

See previously practiced appellate and administrative law for several years with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Washington, D.C. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and clerked for the Hon. Thomas B. Griffith on the D.C. Circuit. Originally from Michigan, See now considers herself both a proud Michigander and Mountaineer. 

Dana L. Banks, Nominee for U.S. Director of the African Development Bank

Dana L. Banks currently serves as a Senior Advisor to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Africa Business Center, supporting the private sector in Africa and the $15 billion of commitments made during President Biden’s 2022 U.S. Africa Leaders Summit.

Banks served on the National Security Council from 2021 to 2023 as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Africa where she led U.S.-Africa policy for the Biden-Harris Administration and coordinated the 2022 U.S. Africa-Leaders Summit. Banks was Deputy Director of the Foreign Service Institute’s Leadership and Management School’s Executive Development Division. She served as Deputy Political Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in South Africa, Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Togo, and Public Affairs Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania. In Washington, Banks served in Secretary Clinton’s Executive Secretariat, as a Senior Watch Officer in the State Department’s Operations Center, as Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary for Africa, and Desk Officer for Ghana, Benin, Togo, and Burkina Faso. Her other overseas assignments include Haiti and Thailand.

A native of Philadelphia, PA, Banks is a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She received her Bachelor’s Degree from Spelman College and her Master’s degree from Syracuse University’s Maxwell School. She is the recipient of numerous State Department Superior and Meritorious Honor awards. She is an alumna of the Institute for Career Advancement Fellow and a Pickering Foreign Affairs Fellow.

Elizabeth K. Horst, Nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka

Elizabeth K. Horst, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service with the rank of Minister-Counselor, is currently the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary and responsible for Pakistan and for Public Diplomacy in the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs. Previously, she served in Berlin as Minister Counselor for Public Diplomacy for Mission Germany. As Chargé d’Affaires, ad interim, and Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Tallinn, Estonia, she focused on transatlantic security on NATO’s eastern flank. Other overseas assignments include Kyiv, Ukraine; the U.S. military Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Qalat, Zabul Province, Afghanistan; Moscow, Russia; Dushanbe, Tajikistan; and Lahore, Pakistan. Prior to joining the Foreign Service, Horst served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger, West Africa. A native of Minnesota, Horst holds a B.A. from the University of Kansas and a master’s degree from the University of North Carolina. She speaks German, Russian, and French.

Joshua M. Harris, Nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria

Joshua M. Harris, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service with the rank of Counselor, is currently the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for North African Affairs in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, overseeing U.S. diplomacy with Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia. Previously, Harris served as Director for North African Affairs at the National Security Council, coordinating the development and implementation of U.S. policies in the Maghreb region. Harris also served as Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d’Affaires, ad interim, at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, Libya and at the Libya External Office in Tunis, Tunisia. Earlier assignments included Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and Director of the Office of Maghreb Affairs in the Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs; Policy Director to the Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Director for Iraq at the National Security Council. Other overseas assignments included Ljubljana, Slovenia; Baghdad, Iraq; and Zagreb, Croatia. Harris is a graduate of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and the London School of Economics and Political Science. He speaks Arabic, Croatian, French, Italian, Polish, and Slovenian.

Troy Fitrell, Nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Republic of Seychelles

Troy Fitrell, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, class of Minister-Counselor, currently serves as the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Guinea. Previously, he was the director of the Office of West African Affairs at the Department of State and, prior to that, he served as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. embassies in Ethiopia and Mauritius, and as Deputy Director of the Department’s Office of Southern African Affairs. Earlier, he was Senior Advisor to the United States Special Envoy for the Great Lakes of Africa, coordinating U.S. policy on the cross-border security, political, and economic issues in the Great Lakes region. Fitrell served as a Pearson Fellow on the staff of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. In that position, he divided his time between Asia and Pacific issues, including sovereignty in the South China Sea, and African issues, including developments in democracy in Ethiopia and Kenya. Fitrell earned a B.A. at the University of Maryland and an M.S. at the National War College. He speaks French, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish and Danish.

Mary E. Daschbach, Nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Togolese Republic

Mary E. Daschbach, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service with the rank of Counselor, is currently Deputy Chief of Mission in the Republic of Cameroon, where she also served as Chargé d’Affaires, ad interim. Prior to that, she served as Senior Foreign Policy Advisor to the Strategy, Engagement, and Programs Directorate at U.S. Africa Command. Earlier, Daschbach was the Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d’Affaires, ad interim. in the Republic of the Congo, Public Affairs Officer in Lomé, Togo, and Information Officer in Accra, Ghana. Apart from her work in Africa, other Foreign Service assignments include London, United Kingdom; San José, Costa Rica; and Washington, D.C. as the Desk Officer for Paraguay and Uruguay, and Director for South and Central Asia in the Bureau of International Information Programs. Her first overseas assignment with the U.S. government was as the Associate Peace Corps Director for Management in Cotonou, Benin. Daschbach began her government career at the Community Relations Service office of the Department of Justice. Prior to her government service, Daschbach was employed by Associates for International Research, Inc. in Cambridge, MA. She taught French at the Cambridge School of Weston, MA and worked at Beacon Press in Boston, MA. A resident of Rhode Island, Daschbach has an M.A. in National Security and Strategic Studies from the College of Naval Warfare and a B.A. from Yale University. She speaks French and Spanish.

 

###