Three Mainers go to Washington
Glenn Cummings
A Portland Democrat and former Speaker of the Maine House, Cummings will join the Obama administration on May 5. In a recent interview with Mainebiz, he pledged to help restore the United States to its place in the top tier of countries with an educated populace in his role as deputy assistant secretary of the Office of Vocational and Adult Education in the U.S. Department of Education. The U.S. is no longer among the top 10 countries with educated citizenry, he said. Currently a dean of institutional advancement at Southern Maine Community College, Cummings, 48, said he expects most of his work will focus on adult education, a central part of the Obama administration’s goal to increase the number of Americans with college degrees.
Emmett Beliveau
A Maine native and Colby College alumnus, he is President Obama’s director of advance, which means he plans every presidential event that takes place outside the White House, whether in Virginia or Israel. Beliveau has been working with Obama since early 2007, when he left his lobbyist job at a D.C. law firm to oversee Obama’s campaign events, including the inauguration in Washington, D.C., in January. He got his start in campaigning at the age of 10, when his father, lobbyist Severin Beliveau, made an unsuccessful gubernatorial bid in 1986, according to the Sun Journal. Beliveau’s presidential campaigning experience includes working on Vice President Al Gore’s 2000 campaign and Sen. John Kerry’s 2004 campaign.
Karen Gordon Mills
A venture capitalist and graduate of Harvard Business School, the Brunswick resident was unanimously confirmed as administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration on April 2. Mills runs the private equity firm MMP Group, and in 2007, was nominated by Gov. John Baldacci to chair his Council on Competitiveness and the Economy. She conducted research for the 2006 Brookings Institution report “Charting Maine’s Future” on business clusters in Maine and helped convince legislators to pass a $50 million research and development bond. Mills’ peers say she will likely be nonpartisan, and balance her background as a business financial backer with her experience using government to serve small businesses, according to BusinessWeek.
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