White House Announces Nominee for PBGC Director

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

Deva Kyle

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.  

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

She also served as tax counsel on detail to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means, advising members on retirement policy and law.

Kyle earned a B.A. in sociology from Vassar College and a J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center. 

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. 

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.” 

The National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans Executive Director Michael Scott also expressed his support for Kyle’s nomination.  

“[Kyle’s] extensive experience at the PBGC, as well as in the private sector representing defined-benefit plans, will allow her to provide the PBGC with the leadership the nation needs to protect the retirement security of millions of Americans whose pensions are insured by the PBGC’s single-employer and multiemployer guaranty programs,” Scott stated. “Deva’s demonstrated expertise in defined benefit plans, her political skills and her ability to work in a bipartisan manner will serve the PBGC and its stakeholders well. NCCMP urges bipartisan support for her nomination as well as a swift confirmation by the Senate.” 

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.” 

The senator also voiced concerns over the rollout of the Special Financial Assistance program implemented through the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. He further argued that the PBGC has created challenges for single-employer plans by “failing to timely provide necessary information that would help them correct their financial problems.” 

In response to Cassidy’s letter, Isaacson says she believes Kyle fits the bill of having a bipartisan track record and substantive experience on the subjects that Cassidy laid out. 

“[Kyle] is an attorney that has been working with compliance and counseling clients on these matters, … so I feel like she is a nominee that [Cassidy’s] office could work with,” Isaacson says.  

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.