A mother of two who is currently on vacation in Mexico is the interim leader of the Department of Government Efficiency, the White House finally confirmed Tuesday.
Amy Gleason, a 55-year-old former official at the U.S. Digital Service who helped build the COVID-19 database in Donald Trump’s first term, is said to be the “acting administrator” of Elon Musk’s DOGE goons stripping down the federal workforce.
Gleason’s unmasking comes after pressure was put on the Trump Administration to name DOGE’s real leader after a White House aide claimed in a court filing that Musk, who is still the unquestionable face of DOGE, did not have “actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself.”
The White House instead claimed that Musk is merely a senior adviser to the president and not a decision maker at DOGE. Until Tuesday, however, it had declined to say who was actually calling the shots.
That person is, Gleason, apparently—a name that shocked many online given her background.
Unlike Musk’s young foot soldiers, who are fresh out of college with a focus in engineering and ties to Musk’s tech companies, Gleason’s LinkedIn and Facebook pages appears to show that her passion lies specifically in healthcare and her family.
She gave a TED talk in 2020 about the need for a consolidated website where healthcare providers can pull up a patient’s entire medical history—a problem she experienced firsthand with her daughter who suffers from Juvenile Dermatomyositis.
“Experienced executive with a demonstrated history of improving healthcare technology, including electronic medical records, practice management, patient solutions, interoperability, and federal civic tech,” she writes of herself. “My work is inspired by my firsthand experience navigating the healthcare system as a patient and caregiver, and I am passionate about creating a better healthcare experience and improving health outcomes.”
Gleason attended Pasco-Hernando State College in the Tampa area before attending the University of Tennessee in the 1990s, her LinkedIn page says. She has posted frequently about her daughters and appears to have lived in Tampa and Nashville.
Her past gigs are largely related to healthcare, with stints at “Main Street Health” and as the vice president of a nonprofit that funds research, raises awareness, and supports families of children with Juvenile Myositis—a rare autoimmune disease that causes inflammation of the muscles in children.
Some have speculated Gleason was given the title of acting administrator hastily by the Trump administration amid growing pressure to cough up a name. Gleason told a CBS reporter on Tuesday that she was in Mexico, with The New York Times later reporting that she was on a previously scheduled vacation.
She was reportedly not aware that the White House would be revealing her name publicly.
DOGE has gone to great lengths to assert there will be little-to-no remote work in the federal government, so its supposed acting director’s presence south of the border may leave the growing list of fired or relocated federal workers scratching their heads.
Gleason was first named in a report about DOGE last week, with sources telling WIRED she and another official had told remaining staff in the department, including those still around from the “Digital Service” days, that DOGE would get “increasingly more hands-on within the organization over the coming weeks and months.”
