The Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) last month promoted Betsy Connell to associate principal deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Regulatory and Policy Affairs, deleting the “acting” from her title.
Connell has been running the office on an interim basis since November. She took over for Mark Gilbertson, who became principal deputy assistant secretary for environmental management, or EM-2.
The Office of Regulatory and Policy Affairs provides an array of technical and policy support in planning and execution of EM’s nuclear waste remediation operations, it also helps ensure the cleanup branch lives up to negotiated compliance agreements growing out of legal settlements or understandings with other government agencies.
Before her acting post, Connell was director of regulatory intergovernmental and stakeholder engagement at EM for a year. She has worked with the Energy Department and its facilities since 1990, at locations including the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, and the Idaho National Laboratory. At DOE headquarters, she served as in senior adviser roles for the Office of Nuclear Energy and Office of the Secretary. She was chief of staff for EM between September 2015 and September 2017.
