Mari Barr Santangelo

Justice
Mari Barr Santangelo
Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Human Resources and Administration,
Chief Human Capital Officer

As director of human capital policy and programs in the newly established Homeland Security Department, Mari Barr Santangelo was responsible for, among other things, standardizing the policies and programs of 22 human resource systems.

What to do for an encore? In May 2005, she moved to the Justice Department as deputy assistant attorney general for human resources and administration and chief human capital officer. And she's juggling just as much.

"Most agencies have the chief human capital officer as one position," Santangelo says. "Here, it's only one of the hats I wear. I also have security and emergency planning and personnel operations. It's really exciting."

She joined the federal government in 1993 as senior adviser to then-Secretary Henry Cisneros at the Housing and Urban Development Department. Two years later, she faced one of the most difficult challenges of her life: the Oklahoma City bombings. HUD lost 35 employees in the blast, more than any other agency. "I think of the good I was able to do in the aftermath of the Oklahoma bombing and I think it's the reason I came here," she says.

Before joining the government, Santangelo worked at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay for 19 years. Santangelo also was director of human resources and acting assistant secretary for administration at the Transportation Department, among the first agencies to achieve a green for human capital on the President's Management Agenda score card. Justice ranked yellow in the last review, but Santangelo says that it will soon move up to green.

At Justice, Santangelo is intensely focusing on customer service. "We needed to know that we're all headed in the same direction," she says.