Rumor has it that President Barack Obama will be choosing Chicago billionaire Penny Pritzker, Hyatt Hotel heiress, to be the next Secretary of Commerce. Her net worth is around $1.85 billion, according to Forbes.
Ms. Pritzker is on the Board of Directors at the Council on Foreign Relations. Here is the full list of CFR Board Officers and Directors. Pritzker is also on the Advisory Board of The Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution.
Sylvia Mathews Burwell, Obama's pick to be the next Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), is also on CFR Board of Directors. She had a Senate confirmation hearing this week.
If confirmed, Burwell would be only the second women to hold that position, after Alice Rivlin, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.
If confirmed, both Pritzker and Burwell will enter an exclusive club - the Presidential Cabinet. Here is a full list of current Cabinet members in the Obama Administration. [OMB Director has the status of Cabinet-rank.]
CFR was recently ranked as the 6th best think tank in the world by the annual University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings. It was also ranked as the 3rd best think tank in the US (only behind Brookings and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) and the 4th best security and international affairs think tank in the world.
In other think tank personnel news, David Sandalow, Assistant Secretary for Policy and International Affairs at the Energy Department, is leaving to be the Inaugural Fellow at Columbia University's new Center on Global Energy Policy. Sandalow was a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution from 2004 - 2009.