Jeffrey Kessler, the undersecretary of the Bureau of Industry and Security, has been sworn in to his new position, the Commerce Department announced March 20. Kessler was confirmed by the Senate March 13 (see 2503130062 and 2503060043).
Paul Newman, former chief of the Census Bureau's Trade Data Collection Branch, recently retired from government, a Commerce Department official said during an annual Bureau of Industry and Security conference this week.
The Washington International Trade Association announced that Nasim Fussell is the new chair of its board of directors. Steve Lamar of the American Apparel and Footwear Association, who had been the WITA board’s chair since 2004, will remain on as a board member. Fussell leads the trade practice at lobbying firm Lot Sixteen. She was previously chief international trade counsel for the Senate Finance Committee and, before that, trade counsel for the House Ways and Means Committee.
Jake Sullivan, the former national security adviser to President Joe Biden, has joined Harvard University as a professor teaching international and global affairs at the Kennedy School of Government. He will be the school's "inaugural Kissinger Professor of the Practice of Statecraft and World Order," Harvard said in a press release.
Robert Rasmussen, a technology policy coordinator within the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, resigned from his role after accepting the terms of the Trump administration’s deferred resignation program, he announced March 8 on LinkedIn. Rasmussen also worked as an export compliance specialist in the Bureau of Industry and Security from 2016 to 2020 before joining DDTC in 2023. The White House offered the deferred resignation program to federal employees earlier this year, promising to pay them through September in exchange for their resignation.
Marshall Miller, DOJ’s former principal associate deputy attorney general, has rejoined Hecker Fink as a lawyer working on white collar issues. Miller left DOJ in December, where he helped oversee changes to the agency’s voluntary self-disclosure policies (see 2403110043) and worked on national security-related enforcement, including within the National Security Division.
Ola Craft, who left the government earlier this year as director of strategic trade and nonproliferation with the National Security Council, has joined Lowenstein Sandler as a senior trade adviser in its global trade and national security practice, the firm announced. Craft held senior export control roles in the Bureau of Industry and Security and the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls before joining the NSC in 2024.
Emily Benson, a former Commerce Department senior adviser for trade and technology policy issues, has joined Minerva Technology Policy Advisors as its head of strategy, she announced on LinkedIn. Benson said the firm is “building a customizable set of geopolitical risk tools to advise” companies in the U.S. and EU. She left Commerce earlier this year.
Marissa Cloutier, a former government official who worked on foreign military sales and State Department export controls, has joined K&L Gates as a national security policy adviser, the firm announced. Cloutier was most recently the chief of the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls’ Compliance and Civil Enforcement Division. She left the government earlier this year while on a special assignment as the Air Force’s foreign military sales country director for Latin America.
Former Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, who worked on key sanctions and defense trade issues during the Biden administration, has joined Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service as a distinguished fellow in diplomacy, the school announced this week. Campbell helped oversee U.S. efforts to reduce defense trade restrictions with Australia and the U.K. under the AUKUS partnership (see 2404030050 and 2409180025) and testified before Congress about the administration's efforts to counter China’s support for Russia’s defense industrial base (see 2407300033).