Karen Brazell, a senior adviser to Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins, has been nominated to head the Veterans Benefits Administration -- the section of the VA that manages $189 billion in benefits for nearly six million veterans and family members.
The White House sent a notification Monday to the Senate committee that will oversee the nomination process, including Brazell's confirmation hearing and Senate vote. If confirmed, Brazell would assume the role of under secretary for benefits, previously held by Josh Jacobs, who resigned in January following the change of administration.
Brazell has served since January as an adviser to Collins. She previously worked at the VA during the first Trump administration as an acting assistant secretary for the VA Office of Enterprise Integration and as the VA's chief acquisition officer, where she was responsible for 1,700 employees and a budget of $30 billion.
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The VA did not publicly announce the nomination, which was first reported by Military Times. But on Thursday, Deputy Secretary Paul Lawrence, who held the under secretary for benefits post from 2018 to 2021, praised the choice in a statement on LinkedIn.
"Karen's decades of service, from her time in uniform with the U.S. Army to her leadership roles across the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the United States Department of Defense have been defined by her steadfast commitment to veterans, public service, and enterprise transformation," Lawrence said. "Her leadership has been instrumental in driving innovation."
If confirmed, Brazell would replace acting undersecretary Michael Frueh and lead the VBA as it undertakes a review of staffing, contracts and services and a concerted effort to increase disability claims decisions and decrease the backlog of claims that are older than 125 days.
Brazell served in the Army from 1984 to 1988 and worked as a defense contractor before becoming a civil servant with the Department of the Navy in 2006. She served as chief of staff for the White House military office from 2015 to 2018 and moved to the VA in 2018.
The White House also forwarded the nomination Monday of Alan Boehme, an industry chief technology officer who has worked at retailer H&M Group, Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola, to become assistant secretary for information and technology.
The VA's assistant secretary for information and technology is responsible for modernizing the VA's IT systems, including the effort to adopt the Oracle Cerner Federal Electronic Health Record across 171 hospitals and their associated clinics; streamlining the VA's claims system; and managing more than 1,000 various IT platforms across the department.
He would replace Kurt DelBene, a former Microsoft executive vice president who oversaw the repair of the federal government's website for the Affordable Care Act. DelBene left in January with the administration change.
The Senate Veterans Affairs Committee has not announced when it plans to hold confirmation hearings for either nominee.
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