What Happened?

About the Company

The Department of Labor fosters and promotes the welfare of the job seekers, wage earners, and retirees of the United States by improving their working conditions, advancing their opportunities for profitable employment, protecting their retirement and health care benefits, helping employers find workers, strengthening free collective bargaining, and tracking changes in employment, prices, and other national economic measurements. In carrying out this mission, the Department administers a variety of Federal labor laws including those that guarantee workers` rights to safe and healthful working conditions; a minimum hourly wage and overtime pay; freedom from employment discrimination; unemployment insurance; and other income support.

About the Person

Prior to her appointment to DOL in November 2012, Ms. Leaf served as the Senior Advisor for Cloud Computing in the National Institute of Standards and Technology Information Technology Laboratory. Under her stewardship, NIST achieved internationally recognized milestones in the arena of Cloud Computing. In 2012, Ms. Leaf was honored among the ten “Top Women in Cloud” by the CloudNOW organization. She was also one of the FierceGovernmentIT first annual "Fierce 15," which recognizes some of the ”… most innovative projects and forward-thinking people working in government IT.” Ms. Leaf served as the Deputy Chief Information Officer/Chief Technology Officer for the United States Department of Commerce, the Chief Information Officer of the Bureau of Industry and Security, and Chief Technology Officer of the Smithsonian Institution. Before joining the federal government in 1999, Ms. Leaf acquired broad experience in advanced technology and large scale distributed systems development and engineering. She served as the program manager for several National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) programs under contract. Ms. Leaf's foundation in Information Technology came from her 1981‐1995 tenure with the Westinghouse Electric Corporation (Northrop‐Grumman). Dawn Leaf holds an M.S. in Systems Engineering from the Johns Hopkins University, Whiting School of Engineering, and is a cum laude graduate of McDaniel College.