WASHINGTON – Today, President Joe Biden announced his intent to nominate the following individuals to serve in key roles:
- Elizabeth H. Richard, Nominee for Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the Department of State, with the rank and status of Ambassador at Large
- Robert P. Storch, Nominee for Inspector General of the Department of Defense
- Sharon Bradford Franklin, Nominee for Member and Chair of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board
- Beth Williams, Nominee for Member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board
- Christine Kim, Nominee for Member of the National Council for the Humanities
- Karen Stout, Nominee for Member of the National Council for the Humanities
Elizabeth H. Richard, Nominee for Coordinator for Counterterrorism, with the rank and status of Ambassador at Large, Department of State
Elizabeth Richard, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, class of Career Minister, currently serves as a Senior Fellow of the Department of State on detail to Georgetown University. Prior to that, Richard was the U.S. Ambassador to the Lebanese Republic. She has also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs and as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, Yemen. Earlier in her career, she was the Border Coordinator at the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan and Director for Counter-Narcotics, Law Enforcement and Rule of Law Programs at the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan. Her service has also included tours in Italy, Thailand, Singapore and Ecuador and as a Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. Richard earned a B.A. and J.D. from Southern Methodist University and an M.S. from the National War College. She is the recipient of a Presidential Meritorious Service Award and speaks Italian, Spanish, and French.
Robert P. Storch, Nominee for Inspector General of the Department of Defense
Robert P. Storch is currently the Inspector General (IG) for the National Security Agency/Central Security Service (NSA). He is the first IG at NSA to be appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, and assumed his responsibilities at the NSA in January 2018. He has worked with the team at the NSA Office of the Inspector General (OIG) to enhance the impact, the independence, and the transparency of the office’s work, including the creation of its independent public website, and the now-regular public release of unclassified versions of its Semiannual Reports to Congress with a number of underlying reports and summaries. Prior to becoming the IG at NSA, Mr. Storch worked in the front office at the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General (DOJ OIG), serving for his last several years there as Deputy IG. He was also DOJ OIG’s first Whistleblower Ombudsperson, leading efforts on whistleblower rights and protections that he has continued to emphasize at NSA OIG. He has been active in the IG Community, serving as Vice Chair of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE) Technology Committee and Chair of its Emerging Technology Subcommittee, and in 2020 was appointed as one of four IGs serving on the CIGIE Integrity Committee.
Prior to joining the IG Community, Mr. Storch served for some two dozen years as a federal prosecutor at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida, the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division at Main Justice, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York. He clerked for U.S. District Judge William D. Keller in Los Angeles, California, after which he worked for the law firms of Covington and Burling in Washington and, later, Bond, Schoeneck, and King in Albany, New York. He received his A.B., magna cum laude, in History and Government from Harvard, and his J.D., as a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, from Columbia Law School.
Sharon Bradford Franklin, Nominee for Member and Chair of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board
Sharon Bradford Franklin is an attorney with deep experience in legal and policy issues involving civil liberties, civil rights, and national security. She currently serves as Co-Director of the Security and Surveillance Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), and leads advocacy on a broad range of issues involving surveillance, cybersecurity, encryption, civil liberties, and civil rights. Before joining CDT, Franklin was the Policy Director for New America’s Open Technology Institute (OTI), directing OTI’s policy work on issues including cybersecurity, encryption, freedom of expression online, government surveillance, privacy, and platform accountability.
From 2013 through 2017, Franklin served as Executive Director of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, where her work included reviewing federal counterterrorism activities in support of the Board’s mission to ensure that such programs include appropriate safeguards for privacy and civil liberties. Previously, she served as Senior Counsel at the Constitution Project, a nonprofit legal watchdog group, where her work included participating as a member of the Cybersecurity Subcommittee for the Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee. Franklin has also served as a Trial Attorney in the Housing & Civil Enforcement Section of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, worked on civil rights policy matters as Special Counsel in the Office of General Counsel at the Federal Communications Commission, and served as Executive Director of the Washington Council of Lawyers. She began her legal career as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable Jane R. Roth. Franklin graduated from Harvard College and Yale Law School.
Beth Williams, Nominee for Member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board
Beth A. Williams served as Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy at the United States Department of Justice from August 2017 to December 2020, after unanimous confirmation by the United States Senate. In that role, she advised on policies including national security. Prior to becoming Assistant Attorney General, Ms. Williams was a litigation and appellate partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, where her practice focused on complex commercial, securities, and First Amendment litigation. From 2005 to 2006, Ms. Williams served as Special Counsel to the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Ms. Williams graduated from Harvard College magna cum laude, with a degree in History and Literature, and she earned her law degree from Harvard Law School, where she served as Executive Editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy.
Christine Kim, Nominee for Member of the National Council for the Humanities
Christine Kim is the founding member of Big Burn Bliss LLC, an international private equity advisory firm. A veteran attorney, Ms. Kim has evenly split her 34 years of practice between New York and Hong Kong. Most recently, Ms. Kim works as a partner at Jones Day Hong Kong . Ms. Kim has continuously recognized by Chamber Asia-Pacific and the Legal 500. Her practice covered sovereign and institutional investors’ debt and equity transactions throughout Australia, PRC, Singapore, Japan, Korea, and India. Ms. Kim regularly speaks on legal lecture circuits both at home and abroad, including American Chambers Shanghai, Asian Public Real Estate Association, the KDI School of Public Policy and Management, and Asian Private Equity & Venture Forum; she also chairs seminars for Practicing Lawyers Institute, the New York State Bar Association and the Bar Association of the City of New York. Ms. Kim has also been an adjunct professor at the KDI School of Public Policy and Management in Seoul, South Korea, lecturing on real estate securities and REITs.
Outside of the legal and private equity sphere, she is a founding member of the Advisory Board of the Center of Hope, Haiti, an orphanage and school, and the recipient of 2009 Hope Award from the Center.Ms. Kim has also served as a member of Georgetown University School of Foreign Service Board of Visitors. She has focused on improving public housing in New York City, and is a recipient of the 2001 Cornerstone Award from Lawyers Alliance for her work with low income housing. .
Karen Stout, Nominee for Member of the National Council for the Humanities
Dr. Karen A. Stout serves as president and CEO of Achieving the Dream (ATD), leading the nation’s largest movement to improve success for all students, especially low-income students and students of color. Through ATD, Dr. Stout leads a network of more than 375 institutions in whole-college transformation. She has received national recognition for her achievements and accomplishments in higher education innovation and leadership including Diverse: Issues in Higher Education’s Leading Women Award, the American Association for Women in Community College’s Woman of the Year, and Washington Monthly’s 16 most innovative higher education leaders. Dr. Stout leads and serves on a number of national and regional boards and also shares her time and experience as an Achieving the Dream Leadership Coach and Aspen Institute Presidential Fellowship for Community College Excellence faculty contributor and mentor.
Prior to serving as President and CEO at ATD, Dr. Stout was president of Montgomery County Community College (PA) from 2001 to 2015, where she led the college through a transformation process to improve student success. In 2015, in recognition of her service to the college and her accomplishments, the Board of Trustees granted her President Emerita status and renamed the student success center on the Blue Bell Campus in her honor. A frequent speaker and writer, Dr. Stout focuses on strategies for enhancing student success and completion, accelerating and scaling innovation, and on launching a new era of community college fundraising. She holds an Ed.D. from the University of Delaware, an MBA from the University of Baltimore, and a B.A. from the University of Delaware. She also holds honorary degrees from Montgomery County Community College and Miami Dade College.
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