and, shockingly coming from the Globe, no snark.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2013/08/13/john-kerry-personal-imprint-seen-state-department-team/heCTCqOhgmjWqVw6vxyPcJ/story.html
John Kerry draws on old allies for team at State
The State Department’s would-be arms control chief, Plymouth native Frank Rose, was once John Kerry’s 17-year-old intern. Harvard Kennedy School scholar Sarah Sewell, who was first enlisted for his 2004 presidential run, has been nominated to take the reins of human rights policy.
From the agency’s chief of staff to its Mideast peace envoy, the new secretary of state has filled the top rungs of the State Department with numerous advisers from his 30-year political career in Massachusetts, according to a review of his six-month tenure.
Secretaries of state have always had leeway to name their own top officials, but Kerry, like Hillary Rodham Clinton before him, is one of the few politicians to hold the top diplomatic post in modern times. That gives him a deep network of loyal political supporters and experts to take on leadership positions.
While enlisting many familiar faces from policy circles, Kerry has also frequently promoted from the career ranks of the Foreign Service and elevated more women to senior posts, according to his supporters in the department.
“You have had two consecutive secretaries of state who ran for office and got elected to something,” said P.J. Crowley, a former assistant secretary of state and retired Air Force colonel. “They deal far more frequently with politicians than foreign policy experts.”
One aide said Kerry has utilized a “network across the administration and throughout Washington that grows out of his 2004 campaign, and which has blossomed during the Obama years.”
And, to answer a question from politicasista, plenty of women and at least one African American.
Some more recent additions to the top tier of the department include arms control expert Rose, who worked in Kerry’s Senate office before leaving for the State Department in 2009. If confirmed by the Senate, Rose would be the first African-American to hold the post of assistant secretary of state for arms control, verification, and compliance.
Meanwhile, Harvard’s Sewell, who is in line to be undersecretary of state for civilian security, democracy, and human rights, would become the third female undersecretary out of four — the highest ratio ever. Six of the 10 assistant secretaries are also women, according to a State Department personnel list.
“He is very good about setting new places at the table for new faces, more so than his predecessor,” McCurry said of Kerry.
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