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Leslie B. Kramerich has assumed the
position of Acting Assistant Secretary of the Labor Department's Pension and
Welfare Benefits Administration (PWBA). For the last year, Kramerich has been
PWBA's Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy.
She became Acting Assistant Secretary on Dec. 6
upon resignation of then Assistant Secretary Richard McGahey and will remain in
the post until a permanent candidate is appointed.
Kramerich, originally from Cleveland, Ohio, will
oversee more than 6.7 million private pension and welfare plans, with pension
assets alone totaling nearly $4 trillion under PWBA's jurisdiction. She is
responsible for administration, policy and enforcement of the Employee
Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA).
When she joined the department, Kramerich had
experience in pension, securities and bankruptcy laws. She came to the
department after five years of working with the Pension Benefit Guaranty
Corporation as an attorney-advisor to the chief negotiator. While at PBGC, she
participated in several landmark agreements between the government and private
companies as well as provided financial, legislative, and regulatory analyses
in support of various initiatives of the agency.
From May 1989 to November 1993, she was an
attorney with Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson & Hand, a Washington,
D.C. law firm, where she advised clients on issues dealing with employee
benefits, disability, tax and bankruptcy.
She also has legislative experience spanning the
period 1982 to 1989. Kramerich served as advisor to minority members of the
committee with oversight over federal government programs. And as a staff
member to the Chairman of the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Health (Senator
David Durenberger) and to the Chairman of the Senate Aging Committee (Senator
John Heinz). She briefly served as an intern to the House Committee on Aging,
working on issues related to corporate raiding of pension plans through asset
reversions.
Kramerich also was a consultant to the American
Association of Retired Persons (AARP), designing educational materials and a
public outreach program to explain a newly-enacted Medicare program on
physician payment. The project was widely disseminated to a broad spectrum of
constituent groups, including AARP chapters, Medicare beneficiaries, health and
senior citizen organizations, and consumers.
Professional affiliations include membership in
the Ohio State Bar, District of Columbia Bar, and the American Bar Association.
Kramerich holds a Bachelor's of Science degree
from Case Western Reserve University and earned a Juris Doctor from Ohio State
University College of Law in 1984. |
