President Obama Nominations For Energy & Interior

President Obama has nominated of Daniel Poneman to be Deputy Secretary of Energy, David Sandalow to be Assistant Secretary of Energy for International Affairs and Domestic Policy, Rhea Suh to be an Assistant Secretary of the Interior and Michael Connor to be Commissioner of Reclamation. The Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee will hold hearings this week.

The Center supports the nominations.

David B. Sandalow is an Energy & Environment Scholar and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He is chair of the Energy & Climate Working Group of the Clinton Global Initiative. Mr. Sandalow has served as Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans, Environment & Science; Senior Director for Environmental Affairs, National Security Council; and Associate Director for the Global Environment, White House Council on Environmental Quality. His opinion pieces and articles have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Washington Times, Financial Times, International Herald Tribune, Science and many other periodicals. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School and Yale College. He lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife and three children.

Rhea Suh is currently a program officer at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Prior to her current position, Suh was a program officer at The William and Flora Hewett Foundation. She also has served as a consultant for the National Park Service. During the Clinton administration, she served as a senior legislative assistant on the staff of Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, where she worked on public lands management and regulatory issues with respect to energy, air and water. Suh is a graduate of Columbia University where she earned a B.A. and Harvard University where she earned a Masters of Education, Administration, Planning and Social Policy. She received both a Fulbright Fellowship and a Marshall Fellowship.

Mike Connor previously worked on water issues for the Senate Energy and Natural Rresources Committee. He managed legislation for both the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S.Geological Survey, developed water resources legislation and handled Native American issues. Connor has more than 15 years of experience in the public sector, including having served as Counsel to the ENRC since May 2001. From 1993 to 2001, Connor served in the Department of the Interior, including as deputy director and then director of the Secretary’s Indian Water Rights Office from 1998 to 2001. Before joining the Secretary’s Office, he was employed with the Interior Solicitor’s Office in Washington, DC and in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Connor received his J.D. from the University of Colorado School of Law, and is admitted to the bars of Colorado and New Mexico. He previously received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from New Mexico State University and worked for General Electric.

(Gather, DOI, Democracy for New Mexico)