President Obama Announces More Key Administration Posts

WASHINGTON – Today, President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate the following individuals to key Administration posts:

• Michael A. Hammer, Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, Department of State
• Charles McConnell, Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy, Department of Energy

The President also announced his intent to appoint the following individuals to key Administration posts:

• Terry Guen, Member, Advisory Council on Historic Preservation
• Dorothy T. Lippert, Member, Advisory Council on Historic Preservation
• Rosemary A. Joyce, Member, Cultural Property Advisory Committee

President Obama said, “Our nation will be greatly served by the talent and expertise these individuals bring to their new roles. I am grateful they have agreed to serve in this Administration, and I look forward to working with them in the months and years ahead.”

President Obama announced his intent to nominate the following individuals to key Administration posts:

Michael A. Hammer, Nominee for Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, Department of State
Michael A. Hammer, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, currently serves as the Acting Assistant Secretary and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the U.S. Department of State.  Prior to this assignment, Mr. Hammer served as Special Assistant to the President, Senior Director for Press and Communications, and National Security Council Spokesman from January 2009 to January 2011. Previous assignments at the National Security Council include Deputy Spokesman and Director of Andean Affairs.  Since joining the Foreign Service in 1988, Mr. Hammer has served abroad in Bolivia, Norway, Iceland, and Denmark.  In Washington D.C., Mr. Hammer has also served in the Department’s Operations Center and as Special Assistant to the Under Secretary for Political Affairs.  Mr. Hammer holds a B.A. from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and master’s degrees from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and from the National War College at the National Defense University.

Charles McConnell, Nominee for Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy, Department of Energy
Charles McConnell is the Chief Operating Officer in the Office of Fossil Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Prior to joining DOE in 2011, Mr. McConnell served as Vice President of Carbon Management at Battelle Energy Technology from 2009-2011, with responsibility for business and technology management. He previously spent 31 years with Praxair, Inc., in various positions in the U.S. and Asia, including as Global Vice President. Mr. McConnell has held a number of advisory positions including chairmanships of the Gasification Technologies Council and the Clean Coal Technology Foundation of Texas. He has served on the FutureGen Advisory Board in Texas, the Gulf Coast Carbon Center, T&P Syngas Company, the Pittsburgh Coal Conference and the Coal Utilization Research Council. Mr. McConnell holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Carnegie-Mellon University and an M.B.A. in Finance from Cleveland State University.

President Obama announced his intent to appoint the following individuals to  key Administration posts:

Terry Guen, Appointee for Member, Advisory Council on Historic Preservation
Terry Guen, FASLA, is president and principal of Terry Guen Design Associates, Inc., a Chicago-based consultancy specializing in the master planning and design of contextual, sustainable public spaces and landscapes.  Ms. Guen was lead landscape architect and urban designer for the West Side Waterfront- Hudson River Park Plan in New York City, the Charles River Basin Plan for the Department of Conservation and Recreation in Boston, and is the master landscape architect of Millennium Park, Chicago.  Ms. Guen was honored in 2009 as a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects.  A graduate of Bowdoin College and the University of Pennsylvania, she is on the design faculty at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Program of Landscape Architecture.  

Dorothy T. Lippert, Appointee for Member, Advisory Council on Historic Preservation
Dorothy Lippert is currently a Case Officer in the Repatriation Office of the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution. In her current position, Ms. Lippert responds to repatriation requests from Native American tribes for human remains and sacred material.  Following graduate school, Ms. Lippert worked as the Education Coordinator for the John P. McGovern Hall of the Americas at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.  She currently serves on the Executive of the World Archaeological Congress and is a past member of the Board of Directors for the Society for American Archaeology.  Her research interests include the development of indigenous archaeology, repatriation, ethics, and the archaeology and bioarchaeology of the southeastern United States.  Ms. Lippert received her B.A. from Rice University and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin.

Rosemary A. Joyce, Appointee for Member, Cultural Property Advisory Committee
Rosemary Joyce is a professor of anthropology and former chair of the Anthropology Department at the University of California at Berkeley. She is one of the world's leading experts on Honduran archaeology and once served as an Assistant Director of the Peabody Museum at Harvard University and Director of the Hearst Museum at Berkeley. She has served as an officer of the Archaeology Division of the American Anthropological Association, on committees of the Society for American Archaeology and the Archaeological Institute of America, and is a member of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Her research includes comparative study of collections of Honduran archaeological materials in museums in Europe, the United States, and Central America, and historical research on the origins of museums in systematic collecting of objects beginning in the sixteenth century.  Professor Joyce received her A.B. from Cornell University and her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Illinois-Urbana.