President Biden Announces Nominees

WASHINGTON – Today, President Joe Biden announced his intent to nominate the following individuals to serve in his administration:

• Lauren McFerran, Nominee to be a Member of the National Labor Relations Board
• William Isaac White, Nominee to be a Member of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board

• Stephanie E. Segal, Nominee to be United States Alternate Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund

Additionally, President Biden announced his intent to nominate the following individuals to serve as Republican members of boards and commissions that are required, by statute or longstanding practice, to include bipartisan membership.

• Joshua L. Ditelberg, Nominee to be a Member (Republican) of the National Labor Relations Board
• Bethany Pickett Shah, Nominee to be a Member (Republican) of the State Justice Institute Board of Directors
• Rebeccah L. Heinrichs, Nominee to be a Member (Republican) of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy

Lauren McFerran, Nominee to be a Member of the National Labor Relations Board

Lauren McFerran was appointed as a Member of the National Labor Relations Board in December 2014 and was designated Chair in 2021.

Previous to her appointment to the Board, McFerran served as Chief Labor Counsel for the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) and had also served the Committee as Deputy Staff Director under Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA). She began on the HELP Committee as Senior Labor Counsel for Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA). Before her work in the U.S. Senate, McFerran was an associate at Bredhoff & Kaiser, PLLC and served as a law clerk for Chief Judge Carolyn Dineen King on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. McFerran received a B.A. from Rice University and a J.D. from Yale Law School. 

William Isaac White, Nominee to be a Member of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board

William Isaac (“Ike”) White has led the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management since June 2019. He provides leadership for the safe cleanup of the environmental legacy brought about from five decades of nuclear weapons development and government-sponsored nuclear energy research.

Under his leadership, the Office of Environmental Management made major progress in liquid waste treatment systems, including beginning operations at the Salt Waste Processing Facility at the Savannah River Site, completing construction of the facilities supporting the Direct Feed Low-Activity Waste Treatment approach, and beginning the first large-scale treatment of radioactive and chemical tank waste at the Tank-Side Cesium Removal System at Hanford. Additionally, at Oak Ridge, demolition was completed at the East Tennessee Technology Park, making it the first site in the world to remove an entire uranium enrichment complex. At the Portsmouth Site, demolition of X-326 uranium process building, a two-story structure covering 56 acres was a critical achievement in the cleanup and transformation of the Gaseous Diffusion Plant.

Prior to his current role, White served as the Chief of Staff and Associate Principal Deputy Administrator for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) where he served as the primary point of contact within the Office of the Administrator for field office managers, providing leadership and coordination on operational and technical issues. Previously, White was the Deputy Associate Administrator for Safety and Health where he enabled the NNSA mission in the areas of nuclear and occupational safety, directly supporting the Administrator and senior managers throughout the NNSA enterprise. Earlier in his career, White served in a variety of leadership and technical positions in NNSA and at the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board focused on nuclear safety and operations.

White has a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Mississippi and a Master of Science in Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.

Stephanie E. Segal, Nominee to be United States Alternate Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund

Stephanie E. Segal has worked for three decades at the intersection of economics, finance, and international development. As a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic & International Studies her work focused on economic competitiveness, U.S.-China economic relations, and the role of the international financial institutions in fostering macroeconomic stability, economic development, and private capital mobilization. Segal is the author of numerous reports and articles and has testified before both chambers of the U.S. Congress.

Until 2017, Segal served as Co-Director of the East Asia Office at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Prior to Treasury, she was Senior Economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), where she covered a range of emerging market and advanced country economies. Earlier in her career, Segal served as an economist in the Western Hemisphere; South and Southeast Asia; the International Monetary Policy offices at Treasury; as an adviser to the U.S. Executive Director at the IMF; and as an analyst and associate in Mergers and Acquisitions at J.P. Morgan in New York, New York.

A native of Naperville, Illinois, Segal earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). She lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband and three daughters.

Joshua L. Ditelberg, Nominee to be a Member (Republican) of the National Labor Relations Board

Joshua L. Ditelberg is a Partner at Seyfarth Shaw LLP in Chicago, Illinois. Before joining Seyfarth Shaw, he practiced labor and employment law at Edwards & Angell LP in Boston, Massachusetts. Prior to entering private practice, Ditelberg was a law clerk to Honorable Ralph B. Guy, Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and to Honorable Joseph R. Weisberger of the Rhode Island Supreme Court. He received his J.D. magna cum laude from the University of Michigan Law School and is a member of the Order of the Coif. He has a B.A. summa cum laude and an M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania. While at Penn, Ditelberg was a National Endowment for the Humanities Younger Scholar, University Scholar, Benjamin Franklin Scholar and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Ditelberg is a former Adjunct Professor of Law at the John Marshall Law School (now the University of Illinois at Chicago). He is a Fellow of the College of Labor and Employment Lawyers and of the American Bar Foundation. Ditelberg is Vice President and Past President of the Chicago Chapter of the Labor and Employment Relations Association. He has authored or edited numerous articles and books addressing aspects of labor and employment law.

Bethany Pickett Shah, Nominee to be a Member (Republican) of the State Justice Institute Board of Directors

Bethany Pickett Shah is an attorney with Jackson Walker LLP, where she specializes in complex commercial litigation, government investigations, and white-collar defense. Prior to private practice, she served as a Special Assistant United States Attorney in the Eastern District of Texas, where she represented the United States in criminal prosecutions and civil litigation. Before becoming a prosecutor, Shah worked at the White House as Deputy Associate Counsel to the President and at the Department of Justice as a Counsel in the Civil Rights Division and Counsel in the Office of Legal Policy. She is the recipient of several awards for her service to the United States, including the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Texas’s Dedicated Service Award. She has also been appointed by the judges of the Eastern District of Texas to serve on the district’s Magistrate Judge Merit Selection Panel. Shah is a graduate of The King’s College and Northwestern University School of Law. After law school, she clerked for the Honorable Edith H. Jones of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Rebeccah L. Heinrichs, Nominee to be a Member (Republican) of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy

Rebeccah L. Heinrichs is a senior fellow at the Washington, D.C. based think tank Hudson Institute and the Director of its Keystone Defense Initiative. She specializes in national defense and foreign policy. Heinrichs served as a commissioner on the 2023 Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States. She is also a member of the US Strategic Command Strategic Advisory Group and is a co-chair of the Strategic Stability Working Group at the US Institute of Peace.

Heinrichs is the author of the forthcoming book Duty to Deter: American Nuclear Deterrence and the Just War Doctrine, which will be published by National Institute Press in the summer of 2024. She earned her doctorate in Defense and Strategic Studies from Missouri State University and was honored for outstanding academic achievement. She received her M.A. in national security and strategic studies from the U.S. Naval War College and graduated with the highest distinction from its College of Naval Command and Staff. She earned her B.A. in History and Political Science from Ashland University in Ohio, was an Ashbrook Scholar, and serves as a member of the Ashbrook board.

Heinrichs is a longtime member of Capitol Hill Baptist Church, is a proud native of rural Ohio, and lives in Virginia with her husband and their five children.

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