SOCIAL SECURITY
MEMORANDUM
Date:May 4, 2023Refer To: S7A-4
To:Senior Staff
From:Kilolo Kijakazi /s/
Acting Commissioner
Subject:Executive Personnel Assignments - INFORMATION
I have several announcements.
In the Office of Transformation, Betsy Beaumon, currently the Senior Advisor for IT Modernization and Innovation, is the Chief Transformation Officer. In addition to his role as the Assistant Deputy Commissioner (ADC) in the Office of Systems, Patrick Newbold will begin an assignment as the Deputy ChiefTransformation Officer. Kim Baldwin Sparks is the Customer Experience Officer.
In the Office of Operations, Michelle King, currently the Deputy Commissioner (DC) of the Office of Budget, Finance and Management (OBFM), will be the Deputy Commissioner forOperations. Linda Kerr-Davis, currently the Regional Commissioner (RC) for Kansas City, is the Acting ADC, Operations. Eric Skidmore, currently the ADC for the Office of Legislative and Congressional Affairs (OLCA) is the Acting ADC, Operations. Nancy Berryhill, currently a Senior Advisor in the Office of the Commissioner, will begin an assignment as a Senior Advisor to the DC for Operations.
Also in Operations, Tonya Freeman, currently the Deputy RC for the Kansas City Region, is the Acting RC, Kansas City. In theAtlanta Region, Yelitza Sanchez-Garrido, currently the Deputy Assistant Regional Commissioner for Management and Operations Support (ARCMOS), will begin an assignment as the Acting ARCMOS.
In the Office of the General Counsel (OGC), Eric Kressman, currently the Deputy General Counsel (DGC) (General Law),will be the Associate General Counsel (AGC) in the Office of Program Litigation (Office 6). Jeff Blair, currently the AGC for Program Law, is retiring June 30, 2023. I want to thank Jeff for his 42 years of outstanding service. We will miss his tremendousinstitutional knowledge and we wish him good health in retirement. Mona Ahmed, currently the AGC for the Office of Program Litigation (Division 6), will be AGC for Program Law upon Jeff’s retirement. Nancy Gonzalez, currently the AGC in the Office of General Law (OGL) (Office 4), is the AGC, OGL (Office 1). Sharese Reyes, currently the Deputy AGC, OGL (Office 4) will begin an assignment as the Acting AGC, OGL (Office 4). We will release a solicitation of interest and vacancy announcement for the AGC, OGL (Office 4) position shortly.
In OBFM, Chad Poist, currently the Associate Commissioner (AC) for Budget, will be the DC, OBFM. Beth Chaney, currently the Deputy AC for the Office of Budget (OB), will be the AC, OB.
In the Office of Retirement and Disability Policy (ORDP), Erik Jones, currently the ADC in Operations, will begin an assignment as the Acting ADC, ORDP.
In the Office of Hearings Operations (OHO), Joe Lytle, who has been the Acting DC since August 2022, is the permanent DC, OHO. Florence Felix-Lawson, who has been the Acting ADC (Mission Operations) since October 2022, is the permanent ADC(Mission Operations), OHO. Terrie Gruber, who has been on assignment to the OC, is a permanent Senior Advisor in OC.
In the Office of Human Resources, Eddie Taylor is the Senior-Level Senior Agency Labor Strategy Expert. Eddie will continue to serve as the Acting Deputy Associate Commissioner in the Office of Labor Management and Employee Relations, until a permanent incumbent is selected.
Please join me in congratulating our colleagues.
25 comments:
No surprise from field employees. SSA has been crying about budget cuts for years, as soon as they get one, PROMOTIONS FOR ALL THE SENIOR LEADERSHIP!! That'll keep the agency afloat!!
@7:56 - actually , it looks like the three senior positions in Operations just got summarily removed.
Yup. Looks like they're trying to do something about Operations.
Michelle King is an extremely competent executive, so I would say it's a good choice.
So, OHO leadership get rewarded for making absolutely no effort to fix their badly broken division. Good to know the new Commissioner is just as pathetic and lousy as the last one.
So Michelle King is replacing Grace Kim, but Grace isn't mentioned in this announcement. Where is she going?
She will receive a made up title and continue to collect her ses paychecks and receive rank awards.
No wonder training new hires take so long with all those acronyms. Good lord! (GL)
As long as the ACOSS is in charge, nothing will change. Kilolo pulled out the guillotine for Grace to make her the scapegoat. This from an ACOSS that claims to care so deeply about the employees yet ruins Grace’s career for no good reasons and based on events largely out of Grace’s control. Disgraceful!
But will any of them answer the phone?
Grace is a lack Luster and sleazy leader. She terminated telework in 2019 and happily implemented anti employee initiatives. Morale dropped to the floor under leadership. She was receiving awards for failure. Grace Kim should not be allowed to stay when attrition was sky high and morale was at the bottom. The commissioner isn’t very good at her job. She has to do something. The commissioner needs to get involved to improve customer service and morale. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. Keeping Grace Kim would result in no changes.
Andrew Saul terminated it, she had no choice. Idk what anti-employee initiatives you speak of. The most anti employee thing now is the ACOSS sending of equality/equity messages and videos weekly while the Agenct actually has critical workload issues. It is truly tone deaf behavior. If the current leadership really cared they’d be publicly telling about the state of the Agency and aggressively demanding more resources. But no, let’s fire the DCO.
Everyone raises valid points, but sadly Grace Kim should have been held accountable and reassigned long before Covid 2020. She is a long time SSA attorney that was not equipped to lead operations for a large agency.She did not demonstrate a passion to deliver quality service nor did she have the ability to show empathy and motivate her team. When countless invested, thoughtful, employees made suggestions to her on how to improve operations, her response was cold silence and directives to their supervisors to keep their heads down. It is no surprise the agency ranks last in employee satisfaction.Hopefully things improve, funding is necessary, but they need capable leaders that know what to do with the money.
This is nothing. If you go to the Agency's SES web page, there's so many executives in positions you'd swear were made up. Funny enough, their bios run the gamut from supremely unimpressive - no ROCs, no awards, minimal education to this person is slumming themselves working for us.
The best job in SSA is "Senior Advisor". This is just a made up job to keep someone on the payroll.
At 8:27, if you have ever had a chance to work with some of the senior advisors, many of them are extremely intelligent and have quite impressive resumes.
But my question is, where is Grace Kim going? Anyone know what happened to her or where her new position is?
803 pm hopefully Grace Kim is being put out to pasture. She was DCO for 5 years and she was responsible for driving the organization into the ground. She should not be reassigned to any post. SSA went from one of the top rated to the dead last under her leadership. Playing tennis and going for walks is more likely what she should be doing.
Email a few moments from Michelle King to all Operations and DDS employees - its official as of today.
8:03 again. I am hearing she is going to OGC, but I don’t know if that is true.
Skype shows Grace Kim is now in Office of General Counsel. Her message states she is currently on leave until May 15th.
Where is Stephanie Hall, the other ADC of Operations? Erik Jones went to ORDP, and per 10:02 am, Grace Kim went to OGC.
She is still ADC for Operations per Skype.
While I appreciate all the productive Grace Kim talk, as someone in OHO, can we just uh, "pour one out" for Terri Gruber getting a permanent senior advisor spot for, as alleged herein, effectively the same abject failure as Grace Kim, but OHO? Or I suppose poor leadership can be blamed on Type II diabetes. Pouring one out, spilling your work drink...semantics.
The accountability sits at the very top in the Commissioners office. Michelle King has been the reason why operations has not received the proper funding due to years of her risk averse conservative management of the budget. She advises the commissioner and the commissioner relies on her advice. Before I left the agency I witnessed many a time where Operations executives asked for help and were never listened to by the OC or other components in fact the were a hindrance. And Operations executives marched on trying to make due with the cards they were dealt. I am so glad I am gone...now Michelle can feel the results of the pain she had a hand in delivering. And I hear that Nancy Berryhill is a rehired annuitant that gets her full retirement and a full Ses salary. Unlike the rest of the rehired annuitants in the agency. Michelle comes in and gets 3 executives under her...in fact Michelle and 2 of them have been on the Disability Tiger Team since last year that was supposed to get immediate results solving the backlog and its just climbed. I am so glad I don't have to witness this first hand any longer but I feel sorry for Operations employees and the public that so needs a functional agency. I guess it will take the next Commissioner to get the change we need. Very sad.
So agree. How many eyeballs would roll in All Managers Call whenever she would talk and all the exasperation for someone who clearly did not understand what the component did. Also, Nothing was worse than the idiotic rebranding staff position titles that made no sense.
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