Appointments

• Marie Collins Johns has been nominated by President Barack Obama for deputy administrator for the Small Business Administration. She is the founder and managing member of L&L Consulting, a management consulting firm. Johns retired as president of Verizon Washington, D.C., after a career of over 20 years in the telecommunications industry.

• Sharon E. Burke has been nominated for director of operational energy plans and programs at the Department of Defense. Burke currently is a vice president at the Center for a New American Security. She has served in several government posts prior to her nomination: as a member of the policy planning staff at the State Department, a country director in the Defense Department and a speechwriter to the secretary of Defense. Burke also worked for the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment.
 
• Marilyn A. Brown has been nominated by Obama as a member of the board of directors for the Tennessee Valley Authority. She is a professor at the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Before joining the school, Brown worked at the Energy Department’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. She also is a co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

• William C. Ostendorff has been nominated for commissioner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He is the director of the Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy and director of the Board on Global Science and Technology at the National Academies. Before joining the National Academies, he served as principal deputy administrator at the National Nuclear Security Administration. Ostendorff also worked on the staff of the House Armed Services Committee as counsel and staff director for the Strategic Forces subcommittee. He was an officer in the U.S. Navy from 1976 until he retired in 2002 at the grade of captain.

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