President Biden intends to appoint 26 senior executives from multiple sectors to a council that advises the White House on approaches to ensure the resilience and security of critical infrastructure assets in the country.
The National Infrastructure Advisory Council appointees have professional backgrounds in various fields such as information technology, defense and higher education, the White House said Wednesday.
Biden chose Abedayo Ogunlesi, a founding partner of Global Infrastructure Partners, to serve as chair of NIAC and Maria Lehman, lead for GHD’s U.S. infrastructure business, as vice chair.
The council members are:
- Alan Armstrong, president and CEO of Williams
- Manu Asthana, president and CEO of PJM
- Camille Batiste, senior vice president of global supply chain and management at ADM
- Madhu Beriwal, founder of Innovative Emergency Management
- Deneen DeFiore, vice president and chief information security officer of United Airlines
- Joshua Descant, CEO of REV/REV Business
- Christine Fox, senior fellow at Johns Hopkins APL and a previous Wash100 Award winner
- David Gadis, CEO and general manager of DC Water
- Michael Hayford, CEO of NCR Corp.
- Constance Lau, C3E ambassador for the Department of Energy
- Norma Jean Mattei, professor at the University of New Orleans
- Clara Lee Pratte, founder of Strongbow Strategies
- Gil Quiniones, CEO of ComEd
- Jorge Ramirez, managing director at GCM Grosvenor
- Pasquale Romano, president and CEO at ChargePoint
- Beverly Scott, founder of Introducing Youth to American Infrastructure
- Patricia Sims, president of Drake State Community & Technical College
- L. Vance Taylor, chief of the Office of Access and Functional Needs at Cal OES
- Anthony Thomas, president and CEO of Windstream
- Conrad Vial, senior executive at Sutter Health
- Sadek Wahba, chairman and managing partner of I Squared Capital
- Christopher Wiernicki, chairman, president and CEO of the American Bureau of Shipping
- Robert Work, owner and president of TeamWork and a previous Wash100 Award winner
- Audrey Zibelman, vice president and industry adviser at X
Established in 2001, the White House NIAC conducts research and provides recommendations to safeguard critical infrastructure security and resilience. The council focuses on physical as well as cyber-related risks and issues ranging from private-public intelligence information sharing to infrastructure disruption response and disaster management.