Image left: NASA's 10th Administrator Sean O'Keefe.
Photo credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls.
Nominated by President George W. Bush and confirmed by
the United States Senate, Sean O'Keefe was appointed by the
President as the 10th Administrator of the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration on December 21, 2001, his
fourth Presidential appointment. As Administrator, O'Keefe
led the NASA team and managed its resources as NASA seeks to
advance exploration and discovery in aeronautics and space
technologies.
O'Keefe joined the Bush Administration on
inauguration day and first served as the Deputy Director of
the Office of Management and Budget until December 2001,
overseeing the preparation, management and administration of
the Federal budget and government wide-management initiatives
across the Executive Branch.
Prior to joining the Bush
Administration, O'Keefe was the Louis A. Bantle Professor of
Business and Government Policy, an endowed chair at the
Syracuse University Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public
Affairs. He also served as the Director of National Security
Studies, a partnership of Syracuse University and Johns
Hopkins University, for delivery of executive education
programs for senior military and civilian officials. Appointed
to these positions in 1996, he was previously Professor of
Business Administration and Assistant to the Senior Vice
President for Research and Dean of the Graduate School at the
Pennsylvania State University.
Appointed as the
Secretary of the Navy in July 1992 by President George Bush,
O'Keefe previously served as Comptroller and Chief Financial
Officer of the Department of Defense since 1989. Before
joining then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney's Pentagon
management team in these capacities, he served on the United
States Senate Committee on Appropriations staff for eight
years, and was Staff Director of the Defense Appropriations
Subcommittee. His public service began in 1978 upon selection
as a Presidential Management Intern.
Sean O'Keefe is a
Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, a
member of the Committee on Climate Change Science and
Technology, and a Fellow of the International Academy of
Astronautics. During his academic postings, he was a Visiting
Scholar at the Wolfson College of the University of Cambridge
in the United Kingdom, a member of the Naval Postgraduate
School's civil-military relations seminar team, and conducted
seminars for the Strategic Studies Group at Oxford University.
He served on the national security panel to devise the 1988
Republican platform and was a member of the 1985 Kennedy
School of Government program for national security executives
at Harvard University.
In 1993, President Bush and
Secretary Cheney presented him the Distinguished Public
Service Award. He was the 1999 faculty recipient of the
Syracuse University Chancellor's Award for Public Service;
recipient of the Department of the Navy's Public Service Award
in December 2000; and has been awarded honorary doctorate
degrees from several prestigious educational institutions. In
March 2003 and 2004, he was recognized and honored by the
Irish American Magazine as one of the Top 100 Irish
Americans.
He is the author of several journal
articles, contributing author of "Keeping the Edge: Managing
Defense for the Future" released in October 2000, and in 1998,
co-authored "The Defense Industry in the Post-Cold War Era:
Corporate Strategies and Public Policy
Perspectives."
Sean O'Keefe earned his Bachelor of Arts
in 1977 from Loyola University in New Orleans, Louisiana, and
his Master of Public Administration degree in 1978 from The
Maxwell School. His wife Laura and children Lindsey, Jonathan
and Kevin, reside in northern Virginia.
Steven J. Dick, NASA Chief Historian
Steve Garber, NASA History Web Curator
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