‘The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution’

Lindsay M. Chervinsky is an expert on the cabinet, presidential history, and U.S. government institutions. Currently, she is serving as scholar in residence at the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies at Iona College and senior fellow at the International Center for Jefferson Studies. Previously, she was a historian at the White House Historical Association and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University. She is the author of the award-winning The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution, and her writing has been published on CNN.com, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, USA Today, The Hill, and more.

Over the course of a 20-year career in public service, Chris Lu, the Miller Center's Teresa A. Sullivan Practitioner Senior Fellow, worked in all three branches of the federal government, including seven years in the Obama administration. From 2014–17, Lu was the deputy secretary of labor, having been confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate. From 2009–13, Lu was the White House cabinet secretary and assistant to the president, serving as the president’s primary liaison to the federal agencies. At the end of the first term, Obama said: “Through his dedication and tireless efforts, Chris has overseen one of the most stable and effective cabinets in history—a cabinet that has produced extraordinary accomplishments over the past four years.”

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas is a nonresident senior fellow with Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, senior research director for the White House Transition Project, a fellow with the Center for Presidential Transition at the Partnership for Public Service, and secretary of the Governance Institute. Tenpas is a scholar of the American presidency focusing on White House staffing, presidential transitions, and the intersection of politics and policy within the presidency (e.g., presidential reelection campaigns, trends in presidential travel, and polling).