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Members, volunteers and friends, join us for refreshments and socializing followed by a conversation with Katie Tenpas. 

Katie Tenpas’ area of expertise encompasses Whitehouse staffing, staffing turnover, and its impact on presidential policies.  Her Whitehouse Staffing studies include an original database that tracks turnover rates among senior level staffers.  Her study of turnover in the Trump administration has generated some 750,000 “views” in its three year run.  

At Brookings, Katie is a fellow in Governance studies and Director of the Initiative on Improving Interbranch Relations and Government. Katie is also a senior fellow at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center for Public Affairs and has been involved in its Presidential Oral History Program.  

Katie has also been the senior research director in the Whitehouse Transition Project going back to 2000. This nonpartisan project has entailed preparing essays on key Presidential offices, monitoring current appointments and executive actions, and conducting interviews with former White House staffers with the hope of helping incoming administrations.  

Katie authored the book "Presidents as Candidates:  Inside the Whitehouse for the Presidential Campaign," as well as over 80 articles, book chapters and other publications. Her insights on the interaction of political institutions on public policymaking have been quoted in major newspapers like the NYT, the WSJ,  the LAT, and the Post, and she has appeared on numerous tv and radio outlets (NPR, CNN, etc.)

Among the many articles she has written including in connection with her Brookings responsibilities:  
    “The President’s Advisors:  An Analysis of Women on the President’s A Team;“
    “How Instability and high turnover on the Trump staff hindered the response to Covid”;
    “Crippling the Capacity of the NSC”