About
Presidents increasingly use personnel to exert direct control over the executive branch—reshaping capacity, expertise, and accountability in the process. My work explains the strategy behind those choices, what they cost in government performance, and what reform would be required to change course.
I am a Manager on the policy team at the Partnership for Public Service, where I lead research on executive branch leadership, civil service politicization, and presidential personnel. I have authored or co-authored more than 25 policy publications—including reports for the Brookings Institution and the Partnership’s Center for Presidential Transition—cited by Congress, national media, and major think tanks. My work translates original data and analysis into actionable recommendations for lawmakers, transition teams, and agency leaders, and I regularly brief Capitol Hill staff on institutional reform and workforce data. I also convene policymakers, scholars, and advocacy groups through public and private forums on governance reform.
My work develops a framework for understanding personnel as a central instrument of presidential power: shaping not just who governs, but how well government performs. A consistent finding across my research is that the strategies presidents use to maximize control over agencies often erode the very capacity they rely on to govern effectively.
My current work examines the Trump administration’s second term as a stress test of the institutional arrangements governing executive branch personnel. Across nominations, acting officials, inspector general independence, and civil service reclassification, this administration is pushing the boundaries of presidential personnel power in ways that directly implicate the questions my research has long examined. I am developing work that assesses what this moment reveals about the durability of democratic accountability mechanisms in the administrative state—and what reform would be required to restore them.
I am also an Adjunct Professor at George Washington University, where I teach a graduate course in Legislative Data & Analytics, and a Practitioner Fellow at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia.
My academic research has been published in the Journal of Politics, Presidential Studies Quarterly, and the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. It examines three interconnected questions: how presidents strategically deploy acting officials and nominations when faced with a dysfunctional confirmation process; how leadership vacancies affect federal agency performance; and why the public provides so little accountability for the executive branch staffing decisions that shape how government works. Together, this work traces a coherent arc—from presidential strategy, to its consequences for agency performance, to the political conditions that sustain the status quo.
I hold a Ph.D. and M.A. in Political Science from Vanderbilt University and a B.S. in Political Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
