11-03-2001
PEOPLE: People for November 3, 2001
Image-Makers
Neel Lattimore has this to say about his new employer: "I hope in 10
years this organization goes out of business." Lattimore, 41, is the
new communications director for the International AIDS Trust, which formed
recently to fight the threat of HIV infection and AIDS worldwide. He's
hoping that scientists will eventually develop a cure for AIDS, or at
least a surefire way to stop the spread of HIV. Lattimore was press
secretary to then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom he served from
1993-97. In addition to fielding questions on Clinton's work in the White
House, Lattimore dealt with the day-to-day stuff, such as the first lady's
haircuts. "I wanted to talk about health care, not hair care,"
he recalled. After leaving the Administration, Lattimore joined PR firm
BSMG Worldwide, where he worked primarily with technology and education
clients, including Microsoft Corp. Then he got a call from IAT's
president, Sandra L. Thurman, the former director of the White House
Office of National AIDS Policy. Lattimore's new job, he says, "is a
great opportunity to try to save a life."
Interest Groups
Teaching children to read is no easy task, says Carol Hampton Rasco, the
new president and CEO of Reading Is Fundamental Inc., a nonprofit group
that advocates literacy for children. Rasco learned this firsthand as a
sixth-grade teacher in Arkansas more than 30 years ago. "It was both
horrifying and heartbreaking to see children who had reached the sixth
grade and could not read," she remembers. "It was clear that
they would fall further and further behind." Rasco's solution was to
pair students with community volunteers who served as reading tutors.
"We did not do everything we could or should have, but one of the
right things we did was recognize that it was an individual-by-individual
issue," she says. In 1983, Rasco joined the staff of then-Gov. Bill
Clinton. When he became President, she followed him to the White House
and, during his first term, advised him on education policy as the
director of the Domestic Policy Council. In 1997, Rasco, 53, became
director of the America Reads Challenge, an Education Department
initiative. Earlier this year, she served as the executive director for
government relations at the College Board.
The Paralyzed Veterans of America-a group that regularly takes on the
government and wins-has a new chief financial officer, Bruce Livingston.
Twenty years ago, as a petty officer in the U.S. Navy, Livingston took
care of his fellow sailors by working in the stores, laundries, and
barbershops that operate aboard the Navy's ships. That experience led him
to become a CPA and to pursue a career in accounting: first with the
prominent firm PricewaterhouseCoopers and then as the chief financial
officer for the Washington-area Rental Tools & Equipment Co. Now,
Livingston, 45, has come full circle. He is back to serving those who have
served their country. It was time to give back, Livingston said: "I
did well in my past. I was looking to get involved in something
meaningful."
As a policy attorney with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission,
Jocelyn Samuels helped draft the report that said employers who covered
prescription drugs without including contraception were in violation of
Title VII, which prohibits discrimination in employment based on a
person's sex. That's how Samuels became interested in the National Women's
Law Center, which she is joining as vice president and director of
educational opportunities. "When I became aware that this job was
open, I immediately put together a resume and sent it over," she
said. Samuels, 45, comes to the center from the office of Sen. Edward
Kennedy, D-Mass., where she served as his labor counsel. Before her 10
years with the EEOC, she had clerked for a federal judge, served as a
State Department attorney on U.S.-Iran arbitration, worked for the law
firm Arnold & Porter, and worked for an independent counsel. "I'm
a walking violation of separation of powers," she joked. Samuels is
also president of Machar, a local Jewish secular humanist
organization.
There is a new face on the government affairs team at the Falls Church,
Va.-based National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors.
Heather Eilers-Bowser, 29, last week became the organization's director of
legislative affairs. Eilers-Bowser is a five-year veteran of the Hill. She
comes from the office of House Energy and Commerce Committee member Greg
Ganske, R-Iowa, whom she served as a senior legislative assistant.
Previously, she was a legislative assistant for then-Rep. Linda Smith,
R-Wash. David Winston, NAIFA's vice president of government affairs, was
the one who added Eilers-Bowser to the team. "Heather thoroughly
understands Capitol Hill," he said. Eilers-Bowser will focus on
property-casualty and financial services regulation, while Mo Goff, the
government affairs director, will work on insurance taxation and pensions.
An Idaho native, Eilers-Bowser earned her law degree earlier this year
from George Mason University.
In the Tanks
"The idea that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter
is ludicrous," Clifford D. May declares. "Terrorism is never
justifiable." That's one of the basic beliefs of the Foundation for
the Defense of Democracies, a think tank created in the wake of the
September 11 attacks to study the ideologies that drive terrorism and the
policies than can combat it. May, 50, has just signed on as the executive
director. Board members include former Rep. Jack Kemp, R-N.Y., former Sen.
Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., publishing CEO and former presidential candidate
Steve Forbes, and former U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick. May covered
Kemp and Lautenberg as a reporter for The New York Times, where he worked
for nearly 10 years. He later spent four years as the Republican National
Committee's communications director, and this year he became a senior
managing director at the Washington office of BSMG Worldwide. May recalled
the creation of the anti-terrorism foundation: "I didn't know if I
could bring [Kemp and Lautenberg] together. Frank Lautenberg said, `Jack
Kemp and I agree on nothing.' I said, `That's the point. I want to see you
on TV saying, "Jack Kemp and I agree about nothing, but we agree
about this." ` "
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has hired two staff members
for its new China Program, which will expand the institute's current
research on political reform. New Senior Associate Michael Swaine will
co-direct the program with Senior Associate Minxin Pei. Swaine will focus
on Chinese security policy, an area in which he has extensive experience.
He previously spent 12 years studying that and other issues related to
Chinese and East Asian foreign policy at Rand Corp., the California-based
policy think tank. Swaine, 50, was a senior political scientist in
international studies and the research director of Rand's Center for
Asia-Pacific Policy. He's fluent in both Mandarin Chinese and Japanese.
The Carnegie Endowment also welcomes Associate Veron Mei-Ying Hung, a Hong
Kong law professor and former consultant to the United Nations Office of
the High Commissioner for Human Rights. She will focus on rule-of-law
reform.
Around the Agencies
After college, Michael Magan, the new associate deputy undersecretary in
the Labor Department's Bureau of International Labor Affairs, took a year
in Peru to teach executives English and to connect with his father's
extended family there. He returned to the United States to work for
then-Rep. Helen Bentley, R-Md., who had given him his first taste of
politics: Magan had interned for her in college when she was running for
re-election to her House seat against Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, now
Maryland's lieutenant governor. "We were the first member to beat a
Kennedy," he says, "which was an exciting way [for me] to
enter." Magan, 35, next joined Rep. Randy "Duke"
Cunningham, R-Calif., as a legislative assistant before jumping back into
Latin American affairs as a regional director at the International
Republican Institute. Most recently, he served as vice president and
deputy chief of staff at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
HILL PEOPLE
House Rules Committee Majority Staff Director Vincent D. Randazzo is
leaving the committee after more than 17 years to become the director of
public policy at the Business Roundtable. In his new job, Randazzo, 42,
will grapple with health and retirement issues, fiscal policy matters, and
civil justice changes. Randazzo has been a mainstay on the staff of Rules
Chairman David Dreier, R-Calif., and became the majority staff director
when Dreier assumed the chairmanship in 1999. Previously, Randazzo was the
staff director for the Rules and Organization of the House Subcommittee,
and he helped Dreier and then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., in their
efforts to overhaul House operations. The Business Roundtable, a lobbying
organization representing top CEOs, has achieved a high profile over the
past several years by lobbying on China trade and fast-track
trade-negotiating authority. Randazzo was lured from his Rules Committee
post by the executive search firm Korn/Ferry International.
Lobby Shops
When James F. Collins was a high school student in the Chicago suburbs, he
played the bells in a production of the Russian opera Boris Godunov. That
experience sparked his interest in Russian language and culture. More than
40 years later, Collins-having spent more than a decade in Moscow,
including four years as the U.S. ambassador to Russia-is continuing in the
field, this time as a senior international adviser to Akin, Gump, Strauss,
Hauer & Feld in Washington. Collins will also work with Akin Gump
Global Solutions, the lobby shop's joint venture with consulting firm
First International Resources Inc. Collins, 62, describes it as "a
one-stop shopping address for those that may need assistance in both the
legal and other aspects of doing business internationally." A senior
Foreign Service member, Collins has held management positions at the State
Department and in the Reagan White House, where he was the National
Security Council's director for intelligence policy. Before becoming
ambassador in 1997, Collins was the charge d'affaires and deputy in Moscow
to Ambassador Robert S. Strauss, now a name partner at Akin, Gump.
"I'm eager to be more active in the policy arena now that energy is
back on the agenda," says former Rep. Philip Sharp, D-Ind. That's why
he has become a senior policy adviser for Washington law firm Van Ness
Feldman. Sharp, who served in Congress from 1975-95, was one of the House
specialists on energy policy. He chaired the Energy and Commerce
Committee's Energy and Power Subcommittee for eight years and was a key
figure in the passage of the Clean Air Act Amendments in 1990 and the
sweeping Energy Policy Act of 1992. After leaving Congress, Sharp helped
advise the Clinton Energy Department and served on a National Academy of
Sciences panel that researched corporate average fuel economy standards.
Sharp, 59, is now focusing on a plan for construction of a natural gas
pipeline from Alaska to the lower 48 states. He will continue to be based
in Boston, where he is a fellow at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy
School of Government.
Another former Congressman from Indiana, Republican David McIntosh, is
taking a job in the private sector. McIntosh, 43, recently became a
partner with Mayer, Brown & Platt, a global law firm, in its
government practice group. He will concentrate on energy, pharmaceutical,
environmental, and telecom issues. McIntosh, a one-time assistant to
former Vice President Dan Quayle and executive director of the Council on
Competitiveness, won former Rep. Philip Sharp's House seat in 1995. He
chaired the Government Reform Committee's National Economic Growth,
Natural Resources, and Regulatory Affairs Subcommittee. McIntosh left
Congress in 2001 after mounting an unsuccessful campaign for governor of
Indiana. The new job at Mayer, Brown, he said, "gives me an
outstanding platform from which to represent business clients in gaining
important regulatory relief in Congress and in curbing lawsuit
abuses." Currently, McIntosh is looking at ideas to expand new
sources of energy in Alaska and is helping to develop a plan for the
pharmaceutical industry to produce vaccinations in response to
bioterrorism. McIntosh is the founder and national co-chairman of the
conservative Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies.
Erin Heath
National Journal
