Doge’s interim administrator Amy Gleason, surrounded by mystery

Amy Gleason, a former emergency room nurse turned into a medical care technologist, was afraid. It was 2010 and no doctor could discover what was behind the strange constellation of his daughter Morgan’s symptoms, including eruptions and muscle weakness so severe that he could no longer walk up stairs.

When Morgan was finally diagnosed with a rare and potentially potentially deadly autoimmune disorder after more than a year, Gleason was determined to empower other patients, so they did not face similar delays in the diagnosis.

“If a doctor had seen all these visits and activities on a single screen together, they would probably have wondered why this 10 or 11 -year -old boy goes to the doctor all the time,” Gleason said in a Tedx 2020 talk. “And perhaps that would have caused a faster diagnosis.”

Until recently, Gleason, 53, had been a relatively low -profile medical care data creak by simplifying access to electronic medical records.

Then, at the end of February, the White House announced that Gleason had been appointed interim administrator of the Government’s efficiency department, raising it to a prominent position in the Trump administration.

Gleason previously worked on projects related to health data in the US Digital Service., The predecessor of Dege, superimposed with Trump’s first mandate and the Biden administration.

However, the White House has not provided details about why, exactly, he selected Gleason to lead Doge, a working group unit in the center of administration’s efforts to rationalize the federal government.

The measure has led many to question whether Gleason is really in charge or if power resides with Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and a special government employee who has been Doge’s face.

For weeks, the administration evaded questions about who was really at the helm; The White House said Gleason was the interim administrator only after the administration lawyers could not answer who was in charge of the agency when asked in court. Gleason does not seem to have made public comments since the White House announced that she was Doge’s main officer.

The administration has also revealed very little about who works for Doge and what they do, despite Musk’s transparency statements.

Even with Gleason’s title, Musk still seems to be maintained. As recently as Tuesday, Trump referred to Dege as “headed by Elon Musk”, establishing new legal questions about group’s operations. The working relationship between Musk and Gleason is not clear, and a Doge spokesman did not answer the NBC News questions about Gleason’s responsibilities on Friday.

Gleason also did not respond to a request for comments for this story. In interviews, the former colleagues described her as a highly intelligent asset and the most valuable where she works.

“It is exactly the type of person you need on paper like this,” said Dr. Gregg Alexander, a pediatrician in London, Ohio, who has known her for about 20 years. “She has always tried to do the right thing.”

Even so, some former colleagues care that in their role as Lege, Gleason be inadvertently complicit in cuts to programs that have personal importance for her, including research for rare disease funds. Doge has threatened dramatic budget cuts to federal health agencies, such as centers for disease control and prevention and national health institutes.

The condition that Gleason’s daughter, who is now about 20 years old, was diagnosed is called youth dermatomyositis. Extremely rare disease is a form of youthful myositis, in which a child’s immune system attacks its own cells and tissues.

The therapies discovered over the years thanks to the associations with NiH have improved the prognosis of youth myositis, said James Minow, executive director of the Cure JM Foundation Defense Organization, where Gleason served as a member of the Board and Vice President of Research from 2014 to 2018, according to his LinkedIn profile.

But with the Trump administration trying to reduce the funds of the NIH subsidy, Minow said he was worried that Doge could hinder the rare research of diseases on which Gleason’s family and many others depend.

“Amy is a very thorough thinker, and I think she will be one that will make very solid and reasoned recommendations for the president while looking at what he sees as her mission of reducing the size of the government,” said Minow. “Obviously, Cure JM wants to do everything possible to protect NIH’s investment.”

Gleason’s friends and former colleagues describe her as apolitical. From 2018 to 2021, he worked for the US digital service, an agency created by the Obama administration after its chaotic deployment of Healthcare.gov. Much of his period was dedicated to associating with the Medicare and Medicaid service centers to improve patients access to medical care records, Tedx 2020 said in his talk.

During the last part of his time there, he worked on the data team for the White House Coronavirus working group, creating hospitals and laboratories databases in which the governors and the public trusted to track the virus. His LinkedIn profile says he joined the US Digital Service. In January of this year as the main advisor, although the New York Times reported that he was reintroduced in the agency at the end of December, before the inauguration of Trump.

Gleason has also worked in the private sector in several companies and new medical care management companies. He held vice president in AllScripts, which provided software for electronic medical records, and worked from 2011 to 2018 in Caresync, a Florida medical technology startup that co -founded, according to LinkedIn.

His LinkedIn profile adds that from 2021 to 2024, he was Vice President of Products in Main Street Health, which provides attention to people in rural areas, and in Russell Street Ventures, a firm dedicated to launching innovative medical attention.

Both Main Street Health and Russell Street Ventures were founded by businessman Brad Smith, one of Doge’s first members who was previously appointed head of the Medicare and Medicaid Innovation Center in 2020 during the first Trump administration.

Smith did not respond to a request for comments; According to anonymous sources who spoke with the New York Times, Smith began advising on Musk cost reduction movements at the end of last year and brought Gleason to the conversations. NBC News has not confirmed the report.

Tom Cooke, a retired medical care executive who worked closely with Gleason more than 15 years ago, said his position in Dege was “a kind of curved ball.”

“I will put my policy in my manga: I don’t trust Elon Musk on this role. I trust completely,” he said. “I am sure that he will use his voice strongly and that it is a direct shooter, whether news that people want to hear or not.”

Cooke described that Gleason had an effervescent personality and an imperturbable work mentality.

“Professionally, I put a lot on your dish to do in a very short period of time, and I was surprised by your ability to achieve it,” he said.

And on a personal level, “I have really seen it reflective with the people with whom they could have had a little interaction,” he said. “She only has one way with people.”

Others were also surprised by their Juge title. A former medical care colea told NBC News through a LinkedIn message that “it seemed to get out of nowhere.”

“I was surprised to know about his appointment for Dave, after being a fierce and committed defender of the patients,” wrote the former colleague, who meets Gleason for 15 years and spoke on condition of anonymity because he worried about talking against the Trump administration could have professional repercussions. “Going from such a position to a position that eliminates the work for thousands of working parents, seems a dichotomy in values.”

Graduate from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Gleason is an avid football fan who likes to use friends who support anyone who is not the volunteers of Tennessee, said Alexander, the pediatrician. He added that she has a “tremendous sense of humor” and loves to travel.

Gleason’s interest in simplified medical records and other improvements for patients date from decades. In 2021, he told the podcast “tell me where it hurts”, which examines the intersection between medical care and technology, which began as a nurse from the emergency room and “quickly realized how powerful medical care technology could be.”

Gleason has said that the best professional advice he received was from his parents. He told another medical care podcast in 2023 that his father taught his mistakes are a learning opportunity, and his mother encouraged her to follow her dreams.

“I have had a very good career trying many new things and followed by my passions as I will develop new ones,” he told the Podcast.