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(Photo: AP)
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Following Environmental Protection Agency administrator Mike Leavitt's second-term job change to secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, President Bush chose 24-year EPA veteran Stephen Johnson to lead the agency. Johnson had been serving as acting administrator since Jan. 26, 2005.
Sworn in May 2, 2005, Johnson is the first professional scientist to head the agency. His main work with the EPA has been with pesticide and toxic substance programs.
Johnson was born March 21, 1951, in Washington, DC. He earned a biology degree from Taylor University and a master's degree in pathology from George Washington University.
Leavitt, former governor of Utah, succeeded Christie Whitman in the post in August 2003, and quickly won a reputation as a Bush loyalist. Most of his focus was on crafting strategies to reduce air pollution. While serving three terms as governor in Utah, he had cut several environmental deals with the Bush administration, including settling a long-standing dispute over ownership of roads across federal land. He also negotiated exchanges of state and federal land, some of them questioned by Interior Department auditors.
Leavitt was born on Feb. 11, 1951, in Cedar City, Utah, and received a B.A. in economics and business, from Southern Utah University. Before his election he was president and chief executive of The Leavitt Group, a regional insurance firm. He also served as chairman of the Southern Utah University Board of Trustees from 1985-89, and was a member of the Utah State Board of Regents, overseeing the state's nine colleges and universities, from 1989-92.
A moderate who was once a rising star in the GOP, Whitman served as EPA administrator for two-and-a-half years before offering her resignation. The former New Jersey governor said she was leaving to spend time with family. She announced her departure as the White House staff took stock before gearing up for the 2004 election.
Whitman, one of the most prominent women in the president's Cabinet, had a history of clashing with the White House, starting with the president's abrupt decision to withdraw from the international global warming treaty. She became the administration's point person in rolling back environmental protections initiated by previous administrations, and the conservation group Friends of the Earth wasted little time in urging her to resign, saying that Mr. Bush's decisions on the environment had undermined her credibility. But Whitman stood steadfastly behind the president, even when their disagreements became public.
Whitman earned a bachelor's degree in government from Wheaton College in Massachusetts in 1968. She was elected in 1993 as New Jersey's first female governor and was re-elected in 1997. She appointed the state's first African American State Supreme Court Justice, its first female State Supreme Court Chief Justice, and its first female Attorney General. Whitman formerly headed the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities and the Somerset County Board of Freeholders.
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