02-09-2002

PEOPLE: People for February 9, 2002

Around the Agencies


April Palmerlee's interest in foreign policy hasn't waned since she became
the president of her high school's Model United Nations. Now, she will
converse with members of the real United Nations as the State Department's
senior coordinator for international women's issues. Palmerlee and her
staff will work to encourage both economic equity and increased political
participation for women worldwide, and they will place particular emphasis
on women in Muslim countries such as Afghanistan. Palmerlee, who grew up
in Potomac, Md., got her feet wet in international women's issues in an
unconventional way-working in the fashion industry. She spent about four
years in New York City as the executive assistant of famed designer Oscar
de la Renta. "I was his liaison to many women's groups, not just
involving fashion," she recalls. "He has an orphanage in the
Dominican Republic, and he's involved in a lot of charity work." She
then spent nearly six years at the New York City-based Council on Foreign
Relations, most recently as the director of strategic relationships for
the Studies Department, the council's think tank. Now back on her home
turf, Palmerlee, 33, is gearing up for a U.S.-Afghan women's
council.


Lobby Shops


Bank One Corp. is opening a new Washington office, and Victoria P. Rostow,
senior VP for federal government affairs and Washington counsel, will be
at the helm. Rostow will tackle a number of financial services issues
currently before Congress-everything from pension reform to terrorism
insurance. But she's no newcomer to banking and finance policy. Rostow,
45, earned three degrees-including a law degree and a masters in
economics-before starting out at the law firm Powell, Goldstein,  Frazer
& Murphy. She spent five years at the firm, where she became a partner
and focused on financial services and housing law. Then, Rostow heeded the
call to public service and joined the Treasury Department, serving as
deputy assistant secretary for domestic finance and banking legislation.
In 1999, she returned to private practice, becoming of counsel in
Washington to the global law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. "There
are a lot of issues in the post-Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act world, including
many issues that we could not possibly have anticipated," Rostow said
of the law that lifted restrictions on affiliations among banks,
securities firms, and other financial services providers. "We wanted
to add to our ability to communicate with the policy community in
Washington."


A top lobbyist at Greenberg Traurig's Washington office, Jack Abramoff,
has recruited a new Republican lobbyist for his team: Hill staffer Neil
Volz. Volz, 31, works as the chief of staff for Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, and
as the staff director for the House Administration Committee, which Ney
chairs. How does Volz handle two jobs at once? "A lot of hours, a lot
of coffee," he says with a laugh. Volz wasn't always set on entering
public service. While still in college, he landed his first job-a
marketing associate for Pinnacle Data Systems Inc., an Ohio-based
computer-technology company. But it took just one political science class
to steer Volz in a different direction, and soon he signed on  as a
legislative assistant to then-Ohio State Senate President Stanley Aronoff.
Volz volunteered to help Ney, who then was also a state senator, with
Ney's first congressional campaign in 1994. After Ney won, Volz joined him
in Washington as a press secretary. Volz became chief of staff three years
later, and he added the committee job last year. Volz says he'll miss the
flow of the legislative process, but now he plans to "enjoy it from a
different angle."


Interest Groups


AARP is expanding its international programs, and leading the charge is
Nancy LeaMond, who recently became the group's director of international
affairs. She will initially focus on the policy issues of the over-50
population in developed countries worldwide. In previous jobs, LeaMond,
51, specialized in trade. From 1997-2001, she served as chief of staff to
then-U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky. During Clinton's first
term, she was the assistant USTR for congressional affairs, and she did a
brief stint as then-Commerce Secretary Mickey Kantor's counsel. Before
that, she spent five years as the president of the nonprofit Congressional
Economic Leadership Institute and four years on the Hill as chief of staff
for then-Rep. Mary Rose Oakar, D-Ohio. But her career hasn't been all
trade. At the Office of Management and Budget, and the Commerce and
Education departments, LeaMond has also worked on issues such as health
care and retirement, big ones for AARP. What's on her plate now? "In
April, there is a U.N.-sponsored World Assembly on Aging in Madrid. We're
preparing for that," she said.


Three years ago, Jim Friedman, then the head of Hill & Knowlton Inc.'s
health practice, worked with Alliance for Aging Research Director Dan
Perry to spread the word on a little-known issue: stem-cell research. Now
that stem-cell research and cloning are on the federal radar, Friedman,
57, is working with Perry again, this time as the alliance's deputy
director. The alliance supports stem-cell and cloning research, but not
human reproductive cloning. Friedman, a longtime U.S. Public Health
Service policy veteran, said his new job won't just involve those
controversial issues; he will also head up an initiative to train people
in caring for the elderly. "It's remarkable, particularly with the
Baby Boomer Generation turning 65, how few of our health care workers have
any specific training to care for the elderly," he said. Another of
Friedman's early priorities was to recruit Amber McCracken, a former Hill
& Knowlton senior account supervisor, to be communications director.
McCracken, 28, is a former editorial publicist for U.S. News & World
Report.


After five years as the executive director of the National Association of
Schools of Public Affairs and Administration, Michael Brintnall has
returned to the American Political Science Association-this time as the
boss. As the new executive director, Brintnall says he's looking to build
on the accomplishments of the previous APSA director, Catherine Rudder,
and to focus on the association's international initiatives and civic
programs, its support of innovative teaching, and its public voice. The
political scientist has made a point during his career of applying his
urban policy knowledge-he's worked on community development as a research
analyst and program director at the Housing and Urban Development
Department and, until last summer, was a town council member in Glen Echo,
Md. Previously, Brintnall, 55, was APSA's director of professional
affairs. He has found the transition back to the association remarkably
easy: In addition to already having worked with the "terrific"
people there, he points out that he already knows "how to work the
coffee machine and the 30-cent soda machine."


The Health Insurance Association of America has named a new senior vice
president for federal and public affairs. Christopher Bowlin comes from
the Labor Department, where last year he was appointed to serve as the
deputy assistant secretary for congressional and intergovernmental
affairs. Bowlin's first post-college job was with the Labor Department, as
a health and pensions aide, 13 years ago. Since then Bowlin, 36, has
continued to work in health policy. It was his focus at the National
Association of Manufacturers, where he worked for five years as a director
of human resources policy. Bowlin said of his experiences there, "I
got exposed to [health policy] from that perspective, and I found the
private side-the employers, the insurers-are a very important part of the
equation." Bowlin then served as the manager of government relations
for TRW Inc., the technology manufacturer, and spent two years as the lead
staff member on health at the House Education and the Workforce
Committee.


At the Bar


The international law firm Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering has added some
newcomers to its Washington office. Joining the firm as partner is Martin
E. Lybecker, a specialist in financial institutions and investment
management. Lybecker has been in private practice since 1981 and is a
former associate director of the Division of Investment Management at the
Securities and Exchange Commission. He has taught law at Georgetown
University Law Center, Duke University, the University of North Carolina
(Chapel Hill), and the State University of New York (Buffalo). Also new to
Wilmer, Cutler is Edward C. DuMont, who is a counsel in the firm's
litigation group. DuMont was previously an assistant to former Solicitor
General Seth Waxman, who joined the firm last year. A Justice Department
attorney since 1992, DuMont also handled computer crime and privacy issues
as an associate deputy attorney general and chief privacy officer.


Image-Makers


Few people can successfully jump from activism to journalism and back
again. But Charlie Miller, the new vice president of communications at the
League of Conservation Voters, has done just that. Miller, 50, discovered
his activist streak as a teenager, when he joined a group that
successfully blocked an Army Corps of Engineers proposal for a
flood-control dam in his Massachusetts hometown. After college, he held
jobs at the Baltimore News American and, later, at U.S. News & World
Report and National Geographic. But Miller's "deep abiding
concern" for the environment pulled him back to the PR world, and he
spent five years as the media director for the National Wildlife
Federation. He then put in seven years at Fenton Communications, where he
led the environmental practice. Most recently, he commuted three times a
week to Philadelphia as a public affairs manager for environmental
programs at the Pew Charitable Trusts. Now, Miller is looking ahead to the
November elections-LCV's goal is to help elect more "environmentally
friendly" candidates to Congress.


Warwick Sabin will return to his old stomping grounds when he moves to
Arkansas in March to become the director of development for the William
Jefferson Clinton Presidential Foundation. Sabin first met the
then-President in 1993 as a representative of Boys Nation, an American
Legion civics and leadership program. "It was 30 years to the day
that [Clinton] shook hands with President Kennedy," Sabin said of the
meeting. Sabin then went to the University of Arkansas (Fayetteville) and
spent his summers interning at the White House and for the Clinton/Gore
re-election campaign. Like Clinton, Sabin went to University of Oxford on
a scholarship. He then flew back to the States immediately after his final
exams to take a job with Rep. Marion Berry, a Democrat from-where
else?-Arkansas. Now, Sabin, 25, will coordinate fundraising efforts for
Clinton's presidential library in Little Rock, which is expected to open
in three years. He'll also be working to raise money for a Clinton school
of public service.


HILL PEOPLE


For his birthday this year, Capitol Hill staffer James Reid is getting a
brand-new job. After four years as senior policy adviser to Rep. Paul E.
Kanjorski, D-Pa., Reid is leaving to take the same position with Rep. Max
Sandlin, D-Texas, effective February 11-the day Reid turns 33. He plans to
take some celebratory time off later in the month to visit his family, but
in the meantime, Reid says, he's eager to settle in at Sandlin's office.
He'll be handling Sandlin's committee work on the upcoming reauthorization
of TEA-21, the massive 1998 surface-transportation spending bill, and
cultivating his own adopted Texas roots. Although Reid lived in both New
England and Colorado as a child, his family moved frequently enough that
he considers Texas, where he went to college and where his wife's family
lives, a second home. In his spare time, he's investing some sweat equity
in another home-right here in Washington. "My wife and I just
purchased a house, but it's an older house," he says. "So home
improvement has become my hobby whether I want it to be or
not."


Erin Heath

National Journal