Experts

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas

Practitioner Senior Fellow
TenpasVitaSEPT2020.pdf

Fast Facts

  • Director of the Katzmann Initiative and visiting fellow with Governance Studies, the Brookings Institution
  • Advisory board member, White House Transition Project
  • Fellow, Center for Presidential Transition at the Partnership for Public Service

Areas Of Expertise

  • The First Year
  • Governance
  • Elections
  • Leadership
  • Politics
  • The Presidency

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas is director of the Katzmann Initiative and a visiting fellow with Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, advisory board member of the White House Transition Project, and a fellow with the Center for Presidential Transition at the Partnership for Public Service.

Tenpas is a scholar of the American presidency focusing on White House staffing, presidential transitions, and the intersection of politics and policy within the presidency (e.g., presidential reelection campaigns, trends in presidential travel, and polling). She has authored the book Presidents as Candidates: Inside the White House for the Presidential Campaign and published more than 60 articles, book chapters, and papers on these topics.

Tenpas earned her BA degree from Georgetown University and her MA and PhD degrees from the University of Virginia.

Featured Publications

Presidents as Candidates
Presidents as Candidates

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas News Feed

screenshot of article headline and photograph of President Biden and Vice President Harris applauding as Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson delivers remarks after her confirmation by the Senate. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Biden has achieved historic diversity
“From my perspective, diversity in the Biden administration far surpasses his predecessors’ in so many different ways,” says Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, practitioner senior fellow at the University of Virginia's Miller Center.
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas Washington Post
President Joe Biden speaks to members of his cabinet during a meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on September 6, 2022
Biden's cabinet hasn't changed, a sharp break from Trump
Biden's first year turnover "was one of the lowest of the past six administrations and may reflect the influence of experience and a professional transition operation," wrote Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, Practitioner Senior Fellow at the University of Virginia's Miller Center.
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas CNN
Pres Quarterly
Waiting for Advice and Consent
Staffing the top levels of the executive branch is a high-priority task for new presidents. Roughly 4,000 presidentially appointed positions are spread across the executive branch, and appointees to the most senior positions (nearly 1,200) require Senate confirmation. Throughout the 2020 presidential campaign, then candidate Joe Biden promised to select a diverse set of appointees. This article examines President Biden's commitment to this pledge as well as the pace at which the Senate confirmed his first tranche of appointees. To assess President Biden's performance during the first 300 days of his administration, I compare his record to his three immediate predecessors (Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump). The data reveal that while President Biden fulfilled his promise by appointing record numbers of women and non-Whites, the pace at which these appointees were confirmed was much slower than those of his three predecessors.
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas Presidential Studies Quarterly
CNN
Senior Biden communications adviser to depart the White House
The staff turnover in Biden's first year marked "one of the lowest of the past six administrations," wrote Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who tracks the issue, in an analysis of Biden's first year.
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas CNN
NPR
Biden's top science adviser resigned following complaints about his work behavior
That's Katie Dunn Tenpas, who studies presidential personnel at the University of Virginia's Miller Center. "I think just generally in the aftermath of the Trump administration, this was an important feature of the new Biden administration. And you need to remain consistent."
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas NPR All Things Considered
Government Executive
Biden’s ‘A-Team’ Turnover Shows ‘Return to Normalcy,’ Report Finds
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a nonresident senior fellow with Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, published an analysis on Thursday––the one year anniversary of President Biden’s Inauguration––about turnover in the administration in its first year. This was a massive issue under the previous administration.
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas Government Executive