Biden Picks Trans Veteran for Transition Team

President-elect Joe Biden has formed his transition team which will be tasked with reviewing federal agencies as he and Vice-President Kamala Harris prepare to enter the White House. His agency review team is made up of a diverse group of out LGBTQ+ members including transgender military veteran Shawn Skelly.

The Agency Review team is responsible for “understanding the operations of each agency, ensuring a smooth transfer of power, and preparing for President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris and their cabinet to hit the ground running on Day One,” reads a press release given by the team.

The teams “are composed of highly experienced and talented professionals with deep backgrounds in key policy areas across the federal government” and “possess a diversity of perspectives critical to addressing America’s most urgent and complex challenges,” the release continues.

Biden’s choice of retired Navy commander, Shawn Skelly comes just one year after the Trump administration banned transgender people from serving in the military under their identified gender. Skelly made history back in 2013 as the first trans veteran appointed by a U.S. president when she joined the Obama administration.

Her positions included special assistant to the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics at the Department of Defense and ultimately as the director of the Office of the Executive Secretariat at the U.S. Department of Transportation.

In addition, Biden has named Chai Feldblum, a lesbian, and Pamela Karlan, a bisexual woman, to the team reviewing the Department of Justice and several related agencies, including the Federal Election Commission, the Commission on Civil Rights, and the State Justice Initiative.

Dave Noble, a gay man who is executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, was named to two teams, one reviewing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the other the Office of National Drug Control Policy. Advocates hope that Biden’s transition team is just the beginning of diversity in the new administration.