Telecom veteran joins Obama administration as director of personnel

President-elect Barack Obama has tapped former telecom policymaker Donald Gips as White House director of presidential personnel.
Gips, on temporary leave as an executive at Level 3 Communications and a top member of the Obama-Biden transition team, was head of the Federal Communications Commission’s International Bureau under ex-agency chairman Reed Hundt during the Clinton administration. Gips also served as chief domestic policy advisor to former vice president Al Gore.
“Gips has been asked to set up the office and manage the huge challenges of the initial staffing. This is similar to the role he played in helping Obama assemble his United States Senate staff,” stated the Obama-Biden transition team in a press release.
Gips’ colleagues at the FCC in the 1990s included former Hundt aides Julius Genachowski and Blair Levin, also transition team members whose names are mentioned frequently as leading candidates to chair the telecom regulatory agency in the Obama administration. Gips and Genachowski, the latter a former classmate of Obama’s at Harvard Law School, were among the top fundraisers during the presidential campaign.