Obama policy deputy DeParle to exit for Brookings post

Nancy-Ann DeParle, a White House deputy chief of staff and the president’s point person on his signature health care law, is leaving the West Wing to join the Brookings Institution. 

Brookings president Strobe Talbott announced in a post on Twitter that the longtime Obama staffer would work as a guest scholar for the think tank.

Welcome to Nancy-Ann DeParle, who joins Brookings as Guest Scholar after serving Pres. Obama & nation as White House Deputy Chief of Staff

— Strobe Talbott (@strobetalbott) January 11, 2013

{mosads}Before being named deputy chief of staff, DeParle served as the director of the White House Office of Health Reform. In that role, she led the administration’s efforts on health care issues during the contentious debate over the Affordable Care Act.

Before joining the Obama administration, DeParle served as a key health policy adviser to President Clinton, and ran the Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP programs during his tenure. She previously work as associate director for health and personnel at the Office of Management and Budget, and served as a fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School and an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School during the Bush Administration.

DeParle’s exit comes at a time when the Obama administration is being criticized for a string of white, male appointments to high-level positions. On Wednesday, the White House posted a picture to its social media networks featuring DeParle, among other female staffers, as an apparent rebuttal to a New York Times report commenting on the “all-male look” of the president’s inner circle.

It also comes just a day after her boss, White House chief of staff Jack Lew, was nominated to head the Treasury Department. DeParle had been considered a contender to replace Lew, although recent reports suggest that the president has narrowed his search to deputy national security adviser Denis McDonough and Ron Klain, the former chief of staff to vice presidents Joe Biden and Al Gore.