A former Tinder executive, the chairman emeritus of a national whiskey distiller, and the president of the California Institute of Technology are among the eight new members of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry announced Monday.
The board is a sort of think-tank and sounding board for the energy secretary. Membership is capped at 20: a head count the board has not quite reached, even with the eight new members slated to join eight members announced in February at a meeting scheduled for Oct. 2.
The full slate of new nominees to the board are:
- Scott Campbell – Senior Strategic Advisor, Baker Donelson; President, The Howard Baker Forum
- Marvin Fertel – Retired President and CEO, Nuclear Energy Institute
- Ankur Jain – Founder and CEO, Kairos, and former vice president of product at Tinder
- Kay Coles James – President, The Heritage Foundation
- Sean McGarvey – President, North America’s Building Trades Unions
- Dr. Thomas Rosenbaum – President, California Institute of Technology
- Bill Samuels, Jr. – Chairman Emeritus, Maker’s Mark Distillery Inc.
- Michael Whatley – Partner, HBW Resources
The newly selected members have less of a traditional government-and-business bent than do many of the eight members Perry added in February. Among the year’s first slate of nominees was Washington fixture Norman Augustine: the former Lockheed Martin chief executive who in his retirement has morphed into a fix-it man for big government engineering and contracting programs.
The board’s operations are expected to cost the department $400,000 per year, including one full-time equivalent employee, according to the charter issued in August 2018. It is intended to meet on a quarterly basis. The board will expire two years after the date of the charter unless the charter is renewed.
