Vice President-elect Kamala Harris has selected Tina Flournoy as her chief of staff joining two other women of color in senior roles.
Flournoy will join Symone Sanders, who will serve as a senior advisor and chief spokesperson, and Ashley Etienne who will serve as Harris’ communications director, on Harris’s team. Flournoy, a Georgetown graduate, has served as the chief of staff for former President Bill Clinton since 2013. She was previously the assistant to the president for public policy for the American Federation Of Teachers, a union representing more than 1.7 million people.
Clinton praised Flournoy, saying she has done a wonderful job as his chief of staff, and that he will miss her in a Twitter post on Dec.3.
Flournoy brings extensive experience in government and the Democratic Party to Harris’s team. She was the traveling chief of
staff for Sen. Joseph Lieberman and worked on Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign. Flournoy also served as a senior adviser for Democratic National Convention Chairman Howard Dean in 2005. She also worked in the Clinton and Gore Presidential Transition Office in 1992.The former attorney general also announced her pick for economic policy adviser, Rohini Kosoglu, and national security adviser, Nancy McEldowney. Kosoglu was Harris’s top adviser during the general election campaign and McEldowney has three decades of experience in various diplomatic and foreign affairs positions.
Harris has big goals for her team including ending the coronavirus pandemic in America, getting the economy running again and dealing with the societal inequities that have only grown during the pandemic.
“Together with the rest of my team, today’s appointees will work to get this virus under control, open our economy responsibly and make sure it lifts up all Americans, and restore and advance our country’s leadership around the world,” Harris said in a statement.
President-elect Biden and Harris have created one of the most diverse cabinet’s the U.S. has ever seen with multiple countries, races and genders, representing the Biden administration. However, some Black and Latino groups are concerned people of color are being named to second-tier positions within the administration.