Tom Strickland - Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks

Thomas Strickland was confirmed Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks on April 30, 2009. President Obama nominated him for the position on March 12, 2009. In this capacity he will oversee and coordinate policy decisions for the National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In addition he will serve concurrently as chief of staff to Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar.

Before joining Interior, Strickland was executive vice president and chief legal officer of UnitedHealth Group from May 2007. Before that he was a partner of the Hogan & Hartson law firm, serving as Managing Partner for the firm’s Colorado offices. He was also a member of Hogan & Hartson’s executive committee. At Hogan & Hartson, Strickland represented clients on a wide range of litigation, business and regulatory matters.

Before joining Hogan & Hartson, Strickland served as United States Attorney for the District of Colorado from 1999 through 2001. Prior to his appointment as the top Justice Department official for Colorado, he spent 15 years with another law firm where he was a senior partner in charge of the regulatory, administrative, and public law practice. In 1996 and 2002, he was the Democratic nominee for the United States Senate in Colorado.

From 1982 to 1984 he served as the chief policy advisor for Colorado Governor Richard D. Lamm, advising the governor on all policy and intergovernmental issues, and from 1985 to 1989, he served on, and chaired, the Colorado Transportation Commission. Strickland also served as legal counsel to the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce and was a founder and board member of Great Outdoors Colorado, the lottery-funded program which has invested over $600 million into parks, wildlife and open space programs in Colorado.

Strickland received his bachelor’s in English literature, with honors, from Louisiana State University, where he was an All-SEC Academic Football Selection. He received his J.D., with honors, from the University of Texas School of Law. He is a member of the Colorado, Minnesota and Texas Bars.

Jane Lyder - Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks

Jane Lyder currently is a Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks within the Department of the Interior. She has worked within the Federal Government for 34 years. For more than 30 of those years, she was in the Department’s Office of Congressional and Legislative Affairs where she was the longest serving Legislative Counsel in the history of the Department. Ms. Lyder started her federal career in 1975 as an attorney in the Office of the Legislative Counsel for the House of Representatives.

Ms. Lyder has played a major role in a number of landmark pieces of legislation affecting Native Americans, parks, fish and wildlife, energy development, wilderness, administration of the U.S. territories, and other aspects of the Department of the Interior. She currently is a Deputy to Assistant Secretary Tom Strickland who in March 2010 will head the United States delegation to the 15th Conference of the Parties of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species in Doha Qatar. Ms. Lyder will attend as the Alternate Head of Delegation.

Ms. Lyder is the recipient of various Secretarial awards for her service to the Department of the Interior. In 2008, she received the President’s Meritorious Executive Rank Award. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Fordham University and her law degree from the University of North Carolina Law School in Chapel Hill, NC. She is married to Alan Palisoul, a retired Federal worker, and has two adult daughters, Katherine and Marguerite.