There is much speculation that Carolyn Colvin, acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration, will resign her post once President-elect Donald Trump becomes president, but that begs the question of who will be in charge after that?
If Colvin does resign, Trump will have to appoint a new commissioner who will have to go through the confirmation process, which at the very least could take several months, but someone else will have to be in charge of Social Security until then.
Social Security’s organizational structure has a specific order of succession should the commissioner step down.
The first person in line to assume the acting commissioner’s role is the deputy commissioner. This is how Colvin came to lead the agency after Michael Astrue stepped down as commissioner a few years ago. Colvin was Astrue’s deputy. Unfortunately there is no current deputy commissioner, so the likely next acting commissioner will be Nancy Berryhill, who is currently the deputy commissioner of operations at Social Security.
Berryhill actually began her career at Social Security as a student employee and has worked her way up the ladder. She has been a service representative, a claims representative, operations supervisor, district manager, area director for the state of Illinois and deputy regional commissioner in Denver.
She is a graduate of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and has also worked for the Department of Homeland Security.
If Berryhill does become the new acting commissioner once the Trump Administration takes over it will be interesting to see how long her tenure lasts. There is also the possibility that other high-ranking Social Security officials could offer their resignations under the new administration, which could lead to a bit of uncertainty about who will actually be leading the Social Security Administration come January 20, 2017.
