D.C. Budget Director Named to K-School Post

The budget director for Washington, D.C., will take a senior post in the Kennedy School in October, officials announced yesterday.

Elizabeth C. Reveal, who received her Master in Public Administration from the K.School in 1979, will become associate dean for administration.

She replaces Robert D. Blackwill, who left in May to become the U.S. ambassador to the Mutual and Balanced Force Reduction talks in Vienna.

Reveal, 36, will be responsible for the school's day-to-day administrative management, developing state and local government programs and handling the school's public finances.

As associate dean, the 1971 Cornell graduate will join a coterie of about 15 senior staff members at the K-School who report to Dean Graham T. Allison '62. While women constitute about 70 percent of the senior staff, Reveal is the first woman to assume the associate dean for administration post.

"For the past decade she has been working in the front lines dealing with some of the most challenging problems of public management at the state and local level," said Allison. "She was a logical candidate for us to recruit from the start because we were so familiar with her recent distinguished record in the administration of Washington Mayor Marion Barry," the dean added.

Reveal has for the last year served as chairman of the Kennedy School's Alumni Executive Council, the school's main alumni organization. Before becoming Washington's budget director, a post she has held for two and one-half years, Reveal served as deputy director of the New York State Financial Control Board.

"Coming from state and local government to school administration will be quite an adjustment," Reveal said yesterday. She added that accepting the post was a "very tough" decision. "I love Cambridge, but I've invested a lot of my life in Washington," she said yesterday.

In the nation's capital, Reveal worked closely with Barry on the city's $2.5 billion annual operating and capital budget. In 1981 and 1982 she performed a similar task for New York City.

She will assume the K-School post on October 7.