White House Announces Nominee for PBGC Director

Deva Kyle, a counsel at law firm Cohen, Weiss and Simon LLP, was nominated Thursday by President Joe Biden as director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.

Kyle would serve a five-year term as director if the Senate approves the appointment. Ann Orr has been serving as acting director since the April 30 end to Gordon Hartogensis’ term. The PBGC is a federally chartered insurer that backstops private pension funds in the U.S.

Kyle joined Cohen, Weiss and Simon in 2022 as a counsel and advises clients on a wide range of employee benefits, federal tax and legislative matters. Cohen, Weiss and Simon is the same firm for which Assistant Secretary of Labor Lisa Gomez worked before leaving to run the Employee Benefit Security Administration.

Kyle began her career in 2004 with the PBGC, where she eventually served as staff director in the Office of Policy and External Affairs, leading the agency’s multiemployer pension policy efforts. In 2015 and 2016, Kyle worked at the Department of the Treasury, where, with a team of Treasury leaders, she crafted the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act program regulations and processes.

Deva Kyle

She returned to the PBGC in 2017 to serve as acting deputy chief of negotiations and restructuring, leading PBGC’s single and multiemployer programs.

Kendra Isaacson, a principal at public policy consultancy Mindset and a former counsel for the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, is a former colleague of Kyle’s and says she is extremely qualified for the director role and “understands the technical ins and outs of the single and multiemployer programs” at the PBGC.

Senator Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, urged President Joe Biden in a July 9 letter to choose a nominee who “both acknowledges [the] PBGC’s historic shortcomings and has concrete plans to solve them in a manner unafflicted by partisan politics.”

Cassidy argued in his letter that the PBGC is plagued by operational problems that have “cost taxpayers money, put pension plans at near-catastrophic levels of underfunding and caused delays that prevented pension funds from being able to quickly right their financial status.”

John Lowell, a partner in October Three Consulting, said in an email response that unlike a number of previous appointees to this role, Kyle comes to the position with PBGC and Treasury experience.

“In particular, she has extensive experience working with multiemployer plans—obviously a high priority in recent years and currently for [the] PBGC,” Lowell said. “While a nominee’s background is rarely a complete tip-off as to how they will handle their role, this suggests that the administration and its advisers would like to see the continuation of and perhaps increase in private sector pensions for rank-and-file workers.”

As both the Senate Health and Finance Committees have jurisdiction over the PBGC, both committees will need to vote on Kyle’s nomination before it goes to a vote of the full Senate.