President Bill Clinton chose Hazel R. O'Leary to be the seventh Secretary of Energy of the country. She started managing an organization with a 17 billion dollar yearly budget, 27 operating laboratories and 160,000 federal employees and contractors.
O'Leary started reorganizing the Department of Energy in her first year in the position to make it a significant player in American energy, environmental, national security and economic policy. She made changes to the agency's objectives so that they now reflect and are centered on five important areas: economic competitiveness, energy resources, environmental quality, science and technology and national security.
She expanded money for initiatives in environmental management, natural gas, applied research and development and energy efficiency.
The funding for commercial nuclear power projects and the production of nuclear weapons was cut. Declassifying U.S. nuclear weapons programs after 50 years of Cold War secrecy was started by Secretary O'Leary. She also started looking through records from a troubling time in American history when radiation tests were conducted on people, often without their explicit permission.
Mrs. O'Leary previously held the position of president of Northern States Power's natural gas division. Northern States Power is a $2 billion utility corporation with its headquarters in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
She also held the position of executive vice president at the utility, where she was in charge of the general counsel, human resources, public and governmental affairs and environment departments of NSP. She previously held a number of regulatory positions, including those at the Federal Energy Administration under President Ford and the U.S. Department of Energy as a presidential appointee during the Carter Administration. Her duties included overseeing the federal government's environmental protection and conservation initiatives, as well as the oil, gas and power industries..

How to hire Hazel O'leary for an event