Soft as Steel

Despite her sunny disposition, Betty Duke has the strength to move bureaucracies.

To describe Betty Duke as "sunny" is almost a disservice. It seems too shallow for a woman who managed one of the largest government reorganizations in history, helped increase the national organ donation rate, survived the death of her first husband, and at 70, is learning Chinese. Yet, sunny, Duke certainly is. "When I get up in the morning, I thank my lucky stars for my life," she says. But the New Jersey native can flash some steel, too. "If we didn't have problems, we wouldn't have jobs," says the head of the federal agency whose mission is to provide health care for the most vulnerable members of society-the uninsured and poor.

When Duke arrived at the Health Resources and Services Administration in March 2001, she was supposed to stay for only two months. That was six years ago. In that time, Duke has successfully carried out a presidential initiative to add 1,200 new or expanded health center sites serving uninsured and poor populations nationwide. In 2005, more than 3,700 health care service delivery sites served nearly 14 million people, up from 10 million in 2001. Duke also helped raise the annual national organ donation rate by 4.3 percent in 2003; in 2004, it was up by 11.3 percent.

A former political science college professor who still teaches part time, Duke attributes her success with increasing the organ donation rate to "getting the right people with the right skills in the right place, and sharing my dream with them." She likens her job to "being a manager of a baseball team," providing direction, and finding the right mix of individual strengths for a winning combination.

Duke's love of learning and education-she has a doctorate in political science from The George Washington University-motivated her in 2001 to launch a scholars program at HRSA, which encourages young people to choose federal service. More than 200 scholars have joined HRSA since the initiative began. In fact, teaching brought Duke into the federal government back in the late 1970s, when she joined the Office of Personnel Management and taught courses in government management to senior executives for a decade.

But after her first husband died of cancer, Duke says she needed to restart her life. She landed at the Administration for Children and Families in the Health and Human Services Department, where she served as deputy assistant secretary for administration. She oversaw and executed the separation of the Social Security Administration from HHS. That reorganization involved 125,000 employees, a budget of nearly $1 trillion-and zero personnel grievances.

Duke projects an easygoing nature in spite of her obviously strong drive to succeed. "I was a redhead when I was much younger, so I don't take myself very seriously," says the woman who was determined to have a doctorate, two kids and a pilot's license all by the age of 40. She accomplished the first two goals, and countless others, during her 28-year federal career, charting her own course along the way. "I try very hard to communicate to my graduate students that life is to be lived," she says.