Most Americans don’t worry about whether the detergent pods they use are harmful or whether the toys their children play with are safe. And that is the highest compliment they could ever pay to Mary Kelleher ’84. As the associate executive director for health sciences at the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (C.P.S.C.), Kelleher is responsible for helping to protect the public from unreasonable risk from items they and their loved ones use every day. In a career that has spanned the academic, nonprofit and biotechnology sectors, it is this work in public service has been the most rewarding of Kelleher’s life.
“I like to say that my job is to help really smart people get their work done,” says Kelleher, who is based at the U.S. National Product Testing and Evaluation Center in Rockville, Md. “I’m grateful every day that I have the opportunity to do that. But more than anything else, it’s our shared commitment to protecting consumers and families from products that pose a fire, electrical, chemical or mechanical hazard that keeps me and my colleagues going.”
While Kelleher did not begin her career in public service, it was modeled for her at an early age by her parents who were both public servants. Her mother returned to the workforce when her youngest child entered Le Moyne and was ultimately recognized for her exceptional service to others by being selected as the Employee of the Year for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. So, when Kelleher was asked to serve as the as the chief of research oversight and compliance at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center during the height of Operation Iraqi Freedom, she leapt at it. Kelleher ensured the responsible conduct of cutting-edge research for seriously ill and injured service members and their families and the latest in Wounded Warrior Care; she went on to work as a senior health policy analyst at the National Institutes of Health, Office of the Director and a health science officer for precision medicine research with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The most challenging time of her career came as the pandemic hit and she was selected to join the VA’s COVID-19 research task force. While others complained about being bored with the lockdown, Kelleher and her team worked 12 hours a day, six days a week to make promising treatments and vaccines available to our nation’s veterans.
This summer Kelleher was nominated and appointed to the Senior Executive Service (S.E.S.) by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. The S.E.S. is a corps of executives across all federal agencies selected for their leadership qualifications, to serve in key positions just below the top presidential appointees as a link between them and the rest of the federal (civil service) workforce. Each of these roles afforded her the opportunity to use her understanding of science to help shape public policy in a way that improves the quality of life for everyone, without regard to politics.
“My colleagues and I may have different ideological point of view, but we are unified in our mission to use data to solve problems,” she says. “At its core, our work is fact-based, centered around teamwork, communication, and problem solving.”
A biology major on the Heights, Kelleher recalls that when she was a student, recombinant DNA, or DNA formed artificially in the lab, was considered to be cutting-edge technology. Today the advances in technology leading to better products is almost dizzying. To that end, she finds herself embracing another role, that of a “perpetual student,” at places like the Federal Executive Institute, Harvard University and George Washington University. That continuous learning will be more and more important as the United States wrestles with the devastating economic and social effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and how to reopen and rebuild.
“This is a rewarding time to work in public service,” she says. “It’s exciting to have had my passion for science lead me in so many different directions.”