- Elon Musk is the face of temporary cost-cutting organization DOGE, but the acting administrator of the U.S. DOGE Service, which oversees DOGE, is Amy Gleason, the White House confirmed. Gleason formerly worked at the U.S. Digital Service, which became the U.S. DOGE Service. She also has a background working in health care startups.
Elon Musk may be the public face of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), but the woman who is actually in charge of the U.S. DOGE Service is a government insider with a health care background who served in Trump’s first administration.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in late January establishing the U.S. DOGE Service as successor to the U.S. Digital Service, which was established by former President Obama to try to modernize the federal government. The executive order specified that an administrator would oversee the U.S. DOGE Service and would report directly to the White House chief of staff.
Yet, since January, the White House has been vague about the administrator role. During a Tuesday press conference, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Musk was “overseeing” DOGE and clarified that he is not the administrator but rather a special government employee.
Leavitt stopped short of naming the administrator Tuesday, but since then Amy Gleason, a relatively unknown bureaucrat, has been confirmed to be the acting administrator. It’s unclear how long she has been in the position.
As acting administrator of the U.S. DOGE Service, Gleason is officially in charge, at least for now, of the federal agency housing Musk’s temporary cost-cutting venture. Gleason is also meant to oversee the establishment of “DOGE Teams” in each of the federal agencies as well as the modernization of government technology and software while also generally “advancing the president’s 18-month DOGE agenda,” according to the executive order.
Gleason is not a well-known figure, but she is no stranger to government. From 2018 to 2021, during the first Trump administration, she worked as a digital services expert in the precursor to DOGE.
A bio page from the Obama era recognizing “champions of change for precision medicine” notes that Gleason started her career in nursing and then discovered a passion for technology.
“She recognized that technology can improve health care, and spent years building and implementing electronic medical record and practice management technologies,” the bio reads.
Gleason’s daughter was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disorder, according to the bio page. The disease, juvenile dermatomyositis, causes inflammation of the skin, and common symptoms include muscle weakness and a skin rash, according to the Cleveland Clinic. In a TEDx talk from 2020, Gleason spoke about her daughter’s experience with doctors and stressed the need to modernize medical records to get a consolidated view of a patient’s history.
After her first three-year stint in government, Gleason served as chief product officer for two health-care-related startups created by entrepreneur Brad Smith, who previously founded and sold palliative care company Aspire Health. Gleason’s former employer, Smith’s company Main Street Health, is “a provider of value-based care focused exclusively on serving rural America,” according to its website.
Gleason also worked at Russell Street Ventures, which focuses on “launching and scaling companies that serve some of our nation’s most vulnerable and underserved patient populations.”
Main Street Health and Russell Street Ventures did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
Russell Street’s website has been deleted, but an archive of the web page, which includes bio information for Gleason, claims she “previously led the United States Digital Service at the White House.”
Prior to working for the White House, Gleason cofounded CareSync, where she served as chief strategy officer and chief of staff, according to her LinkedIn profile. Gleason rejoined the government in 2025.
In her free time, Gleason volunteers with Cure JM Foundation, a nonprofit organization seeking to find a cure and better treatments for juvenile myositis.
