Mary Wakefield

Mary Wakefield (born August 12, 1954) is an American nurse and health care administrator, who served in the Obama administration as acting United States Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services from 2015 to 2017, and as head of the Health Resources and Services Administration from 2009 to 2015. Education Wakefield was born in Devils Lake, North Dakota, in 1954. She completed a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of Mary in Bismarck, North Dakota, in 1976, and completed a Master of Science degree in 1978 and a PhD in 1985, in nursing at the University of Texas at Austin. Career Wakefield worked as a full or part-time nurse, primarily in medical surgical units and intensive care, from 1976 to 1985, and taught nursing from 1977 to 1987 at the University of North Dakota (UND). A request for a summer internship in 1987 led to a position as a legislative assistant for health matters for Senator Quentin Burdick (D-ND), who later made her chief of staff. After Burdick's death in 1992, she worked for a month as a consultant for the Global Programme on AIDS at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland, then took the position of chief of staff for Senator Kent Conrad, which she held until 1996. Her Senate duties included co-chairing the Senate Rural Health Caucus Staff Organization with Sheila Burke, who was also a nurse and was chief of staff for Senator Bob Dole, from 1987 to 1992.