Obama appoints new envoy to TZ

 

US President Barack Obama texts on his beloved BlackBerry. PHOTOS | FILE 

By Mkinga Mkinga and Agencies,The Citizen Reporter

In Summary

• He takes over from Mr Alfonso Lenhardt who served in Dar es Salaam from 2009 until recently. He is well versed in the ways of the Washington.

Dar es Salaam. President Barack Obama has nominated a top White House aide and a former judge his country’s ambassador to Tanzania.

Obama has tapped Mark Childress, his deputy chief of staff and a former Senate staffer, to be the US envoy to Tanzania. Obama was in Tanzania last year in his tour of three African nations.

The next ambassador to Tanzania will be an attorney well-versed in the ways of Washington. Mark B. Childress has served as an assistant to President Barack Obama and deputy chief of staff for planning at the White House since 2012. Nominated July 8, Childress would succeed Alfonso Lenhardt, who served in Dar es Salaam from in 2009.

Born circa 1959 in Asheville, N.C., Mark Childress earned a BA at Yale University and a JD at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Law School.

He started his career as a staff attorney at the Department of Agriculture from 1986 to 1989, moving to the Hill to serve as general counsel for the Senate Health, Education, Labour and Pensions Committee (Help) from 1989 to 1995.

After Democrats lost their Senate majority in the election of 1994, Childress left government to serve as vice president and general counsel for the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based nonprofit focused on public health, from 1995 to 1998.

Childress joined the Clinton administration, serving as senior counsel in the White House Counsel’s Office from 1998 to 2000, where he worked on Clinton’s nominations of judges and other officials requiring Senate confirmation.

He served as chief counsel and policy director for Senator Tom Daschle (D-South Dakota) from 2000 to 2004, where he often handled negotiations across the aisle, including helping resolve a stalemate over 25 of President George W. Bush’s stalled judicial nominees.

Leaving Washington again, Childress was chief counsel at the Balkanu Cape York Development Corporation, an advocacy group for the Aboriginal population in Cairns, Queensland, Australia, from 2004 to 2007, where he negotiated contracts with multinational firms on behalf of Aboriginal landowners.

From 2007 to 2009, he was a partner at Foley Hoag, LLC, practicing in life sciences, energy technology and renewable, as well as performing some lobbying. Among his lobbying clients was the Susan G. Komen Foundation, which would become a part of the contraception debate years later that Childress helped resolve

Childress returned to the Senate HELP Committee in April 2009 as a senior advisor on health care reform, and stayed with HELP after the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) as Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) took over the chairmanship.

After Congress finally passed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in February 2010, Childress moved on to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in April to oversee implementation of the ACA as acting general counsel. He served as HHS principal deputy general counsel and acting general counsel.