Steven Ho is the new chief of staff to National Nuclear Security Administration Administrator Jill Hruby, Hruby said Thursday afternoon during a virtual forum.
In his new role, Ho will be Hruby’s administrative point man at the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear weapons agency.
Ho was most recently director of the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) office of cost estimating and program evaluation. The office provides second-opinion cost estimates for major nuclear weapons and infrastructure programs from NNSA experts who are not part of those projects. An NNSA spokesperson said Thursday that the agency would announce Ho’s acting replacement by Dec. 19.
Ho replaces Douglas Fremont, a former nuclear security chief removed from his post in 2012 the wake of security breaches at the Y-12 National Security Complex, who had been the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) chief of staff since 2019, the year William “Ike” White left the agency to run DOE’s Office of Environmental Management.
Fremont had planned to retire on Aug. 31. Lisa Daley Mangi, NNSA’s deputy general counsel, had stood in for Fremont on an acting basis.
