David Crane, Under Secretary Designate for Infrastructure, US Department of Energy Richard Weiner, Director-designate of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Colleen Joy Shogan, United States Archivist Nominee; Robert Harley Shriver, Nominee for Deputy Director of the Office of Personnel Management Bijan Sabet, Ambassador-designate Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Czech Republic Eric W. Kneedler, Ambassador-designate Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Republic of Rwanda Elizabeth Rood, Nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Turkmenistan Alvin Brown, Candidate for Member of the National Transportation Safety Board
David Crane, Under Secretary of Infrastructure Nominee, US Department of Energy David Crane is currently the CEO of Climate Real Impact Solutions and serves on the boards of Heliogen, an AI-based concentrated solar energy company, and Source Global, a privately held sustainable water technology company. He also serves on the boards of JERA, a power generation joint venture between Tokyo Electric, Chubu Electric and Tata Steel, the Mumbai-based global steel company. Crane is a leading business voice in sustainability, clean energy and climate change. He serves on the non-profit boards of Elemental Excelerator, The Climate Group NA, as well as a Team B leader, where he chairs Team B’s Net Zero Initiative. Previously, Crane was CEO of NRG. During his 12-year tenure, he took NRG from Chapter 11 bankruptcy to a Fortune 200 company. Crane pioneered the yieldco asset class with NRG Yield’s initial public offering in July 2013. Crane also led NRG at the forefront of developing next-generation clean energy through large-scale initiatives in renewable energy (now Clearway), solar for homes, post-combustion carbon capture (Petra Nova) and DC fast charging (EVGO). Prior to NRG, Crane was CEO of International Power Plc, a UK-based FTSE-100 company. Through his public advocacy and writing, including his seminal 2014 letter to shareholders, Crane has made the case for the leading role for the private sector and transformational capitalism more generally in combating climate change, which he calls “a moral imperative of our time”. Crane is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Princeton University. Richard Weiner, Director-Designate of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Richard Weiner is a Senior Partner in the Washington and Brussels offices of the international law firm Sidley Austin LLP. A member of the law firm’s Global Arbitration, Trade, and Advocacy Group, he is one of the country’s leading international trade and investment lawyers. Dually qualified to practice law in both the European Union (EU) and the United States, Weiner has worked for more than 30 years on US-EU trade and investment policy and market access issues, including ten years based in Brussels, where he was the founding managing partner of the Sidley office in Brussels. Active in a variety of community, religious and philanthropic organizations, Weiner is a first-generation American who speaks fluent French. Weiner served as the national Co-Chair of the Biden Lawyers and as a member of the international finance task force during the 2020 Biden presidential campaign. He received a JD from Columbia Law School, an MA from the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom) and AB magna cum laude from Harvard College, where he was the student president of the John F. Kennedy Institute of Politics. He and his wife, Joann, an economics professor at George Washington University, have three grown children and reside in Washington, DC Colleen Joy Shogan, Nominee for Archivist of the United States Colleen Shogan is Senior Vice President and Director of the David M. Rubenstein Center for White House History at the White House Historical Association. For the past decade, Sogan has taught a graduate course in politics and American history at Georgetown University as an Adjunct Lecturer in the Department of Government. He also coordinates the Emerging Governance Leaders seminar at the Aspen Institute. She served as Vice Chairman of the Centennial Commission on Women’s Suffrage, the bipartisan commission appointed by Congress to commemorate the Nineteenth Amendment. Prior to her current position, Sogan worked for over a decade at the Library of Congress, serving in senior roles as Assistant Associate Librarian for Collections and Services and Deputy Director of the Congressional Research Service. As a Library employee, he completed the Stennis Congressional Fellowship Program for the 112th Congress. Earlier in her career, Sogan worked as a policy clerk in the Senate, beginning her service through the American Political Science Association (APSA) Congressional Fellows Program. Sogan served as President of the National Capitol Region Political Science Association and was an elected member of the APSA Council. Prior to her federal service, Sogan was an Assistant Professor of Government and Politics at George Mason University. Her research areas of focus include the American presidency, American political development, women in politics, and Congress. Shogan’s The Moral Rhetoric of American Presidents was named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the top five books written on presidential rhetoric. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University. A first-generation college graduate in her family, Sogan received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Boston College. Born and raised near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, she is a public school graduate of Norwin Senior High School. Sogan currently resides in Arlington, Virginia. Robert Harley Shriver, III, Nominee for Deputy Director of the Office of Personnel Management Robert Harley Shriver, III, is currently the Deputy Director of Personnel Services in the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM). In this role, he leads OPM’s government-wide workforce policy group. His portfolio includes recruiting and hiring, pay and leave, strategic workforce planning, employment and labor relations, performance management, Senior Executive Service, working life and the future of work. Shriver previously served at OPM during the Obama-Biden administration as Deputy General Counsel for Policy, leading the development and implementation of a range of government-wide initiatives, including expanding equality for LGBTQ+ federal employees, improving labor relations of federal sector and federal hiring reform process, process. Shriver also served as OPM’s Assistant Director for National Health Care Operations, where he led implementation of the Multistate Plan program under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In the years between his stints at OPM, Shriver continued to work on ACA policy, operations, and IT. Rob served as the Director of Innovation, Policy and Marketplace Operations at the Health Benefit Exchange Authority of the District of Columbia (HBX). Oversaw the complete rebuild of Marketplace’s IT system and led the migration of all small business health coverage in the Region to the HBX platform. He also negotiated and implemented a first-in-the-nation agreement with the Massachusetts Health Connector to share the HBX small business platform with Massachusetts small businesses. Shriver then worked for IdeaCrew, Inc., as Vice President of Business Development, working with states to improve their health benefit exchange IT platforms. Shriver began his career as Assistant Counsel for the National Treasury Employees Union, litigating cases on behalf of federal employees in the federal judiciary. Shriver earned his BA in International Studies from Virginia Tech and his JD from George Washington University School of Law. Bijan Sabet, Nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Czech Republic Bijan Sabet is co-founder and general partner of Spark Capital, a venture capital firm that seeks out great founders and the products they design. It manages more than six billion dollars in venture capital and business development funds. Throughout his career, Sabet has focused on helping technology entrepreneurs realize their potential and build significant global companies. Prior to co-founding Spark Capital in 2005, he worked as a senior executive at several technology startup companies in Silicon Valley, California and Massachusetts. In his role at Spark Capital, Sabet has led investments and served on the boards of early-stage companies that have grown into global leaders. He led Spark’s investment in Twitter in 2007, when there were just ten employees at the San Francisco-based startup. His firm has led seed investments in other iconic companies including Wayfair, Cruise Automotive, Oculus, Slack, Tumblr, Warby Parker, Discord, Stack Overflow and others that have led to the creation of tens of thousands of new jobs . He serves on the Board of Trustees of Boston College, from which he earned a Bachelor of Science degree. Eric W. Kneedler, Ambassador-designate Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Republic of Rwanda Eric Kneedler is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, Minister-Counselor rank. He currently serves as the Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, including the former Charge d’Affaires, during a transition period. Earlier, Kneedler was the Political Affairs Counselor at the Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, and prior to that he served in the same role at the US Embassy in Manila, Philippines. Previously, he served as Deputy Political Counselor at the US Embassy in Bangkok, Thailand and as Political Officer at the US Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia. Among…
