Who is Amy Gleason, the person named DOGE's acting administrator by the
White House?
 [February 26, 2025]
By RYAN J. FOLEY
The acting administrator of the Department of Government Efficiency is a
low-profile executive who has expertise in health care technology and
worked in the first Trump administration.
The White House on Tuesday afternoon identified Amy Gleason as the
acting leader of DOGE, which has been pushing agencies to fire
employees, cancel contracts and make other budget cuts.
Although DOGE's cuts have been championed by billionaire Elon Musk and
his associates, the White House has insisted that Musk is overseeing the
effort as a senior adviser to President Donald Trump, not a DOGE
employee.
The identity of who was technically running DOGE had been a mystery,
even though an executive order signed by Trump last month called for the
appointment of an administrator to report to the White House. A
government lawyer on Monday told a judge that he didn't know who that
person was, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt had
declined to identify the person earlier Tuesday in a press briefing.
“There are career officials and there are political appointees who are
helping run DOGE on a day-to-day basis,” she said.
Gleason, 53, worked from 2018 through 2021 in the United States Digital
Service, an agency that has been renamed the US DOGE Service, according
to her LinkedIn profile. In that role, she worked with the White House
on the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic.
She returned to the agency in January after Trump took office. DOGE and
Gleason did not respond to an email seeking comment on Tuesday.
More than 20 members of the former digital service resigned Tuesday with
a letter criticizing Musk for working to “dismantle critical public
services.”
In the interim, she had been working as “chief product officer” at two
small Nashville-based health care startups, Russell Street Ventures and
Main Street Health, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Both companies were founded by health care entrepreneur Brad Smith, who
worked in the first Trump administration in several key health care
roles and has also been working on the DOGE initiative.
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Elon Musk speaks during an event with President Donald Trump in the
Oval Office at the White House, Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2025, in
Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Russell Street Ventures’ website has recently been deleted, but the
company has called itself “an innovative healthcare firm focused on
launching and scaling companies that serve some of the nation’s most
vulnerable and underserved patient populations.”
Main Street Health says it works with primary care physicians in
rural areas to provide clinics “with the data and opportunities they
need to succeed in value-based care.”
The company’s website deleted Gleason’s biography. But an archived
version shows that it said she “spearheaded technology efforts for
the federal COVID-19 response” and worked on projects with the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Centers for Medicare
and Medicaid Services.
Gleason also has a consulting firm, Gleason Strategies, according to
her LinkedIn profile.
Gleason has long been an advocate to cure a condition called
juvenile myositis, a rare autoimmune disease that can cause muscle
weakness and a skin rash in children. It affects her now-adult
daughter.
Gleason shared her frustrations with how the health care system
handles such diseases in a 2020 TED talk and called for technology
and data changes that could help patients and doctors.
She worked as vice president for research at the Cure JM Foundation
from 2014 to 2018, according to her LinkedIn profile. She was also a
co-founder and executive at Care Sync, a telehealth company based in
Florida.
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Foley reported from Iowa City, Iowa.
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