Lobbying World

• Dan Todd, a former senior aide to Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), has formed his own healthcare consulting firm called Todd Strategy. He joined Hatch’s staff in 2011, and most recently served as his health policy director on the Senate Finance Committee. Todd bills himself as a “key architect of the landmark bipartisan, bicameral legislation to fully repeal and replace the broken Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) formula.” Prior to his congressional work, Todd served in the policy shops at the biopharmaceutical companies EMD Serono and Amgen.
 
• Katy Spangler will be joining the American Benefits Council as senior vice president of health policy. She worked as a founding partner at VBID Health, a firm that helps employers to design and promote heath insurance plans. During the debate over the Affordable Care Act, she worked on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee as the health policy director for the panel’s Republicans. She begins in mid-May.
 
{mosads}• Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld hired former federal regulator and senior Senate staffer Nathan Brown as a partner in its Washington office. Brown, who most recently served as a health policy advisor to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, will work within the firm’s healthcare and life sciences practice. He also served as a counsel at the Food and Drug Administration, advising the agency on regulatory, enforcement and public health issues.
 
• Mythili Raman — an 18-year veteran of the Justice Department — joined Covington & Burling as a partner in its Washington office, where she will focus on the firm’s litigation and white-collar practices. Most recently, she worked as the acting assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s Criminal Division.
 
• The American Petroleum Institute hired Louis Finkel away from the Grocery Manufacturers Association to become its executive vice president for government relations. He replaces Marty Durbin, who became chief executive of America’s Natural Gas Association last year.
 
• Mark Robeck has become a partner in the Washington office of Kelley Drye & Warren, where he will work on energy issues. Before that, he worked as the co-chair of Baker Botts’s energy litigation practice group. He has experience representing clients such as oil, gas, coal and electric utility producers before state and federal courts and regulators.