Former White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre to serve on Jawando transition team

Former White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will serve on Will Jawando’s transition steering committee, he announced Wednesday.

“We worked together in the trenches, two doors down from each other in the Obama White House,” Jawando, the county executive-elect, said at a press conference in Rockville on Wednesday. “We’re really happy to have her expertise.”

Jawando decisively won Tuesday’s race for Montgomery County executive, beating his Republican opponent, Esther Wells, by 57 percentage points.

Jean-Pierre, a county resident whose child attends Montgomery County Public Schools, is the most high-profile of the eight-member team. She served as President Joe Biden’s press secretary from May 2022 through Jan. 2025. Most of the steering committee members attended Wednesday’s press conference.

The first Black and first openly LGBTQ+ White House press secretary, Jean-Pierre told The Banner that as a county resident, it “didn’t take much convincing” from Jawando for her to join the team. While she has mostly stayed out of the public eye since leaving the White House, she said she is eager to continue her public service in the community she lives in.

“Politics is local,” she said. “If you get engaged and involved, then hopefully you not just make your life better, but other people’s lives better.”

Shalanda Young, former director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, will also serve on the committee. Jawando met her and Jean-Pierre when he worked in the Obama administration as an associate director in the Office of Public Engagement.

Jean-Pierre said she and Jawando became “fast friends” at the White House.

“I think what we’re going to see from him as county exec is someone who wants to make change and is going to take action to do that,” she said.

Other steering committee members include:

• Yaminah Leggett-Wells, an advisor at Community Partnerships and Civic Engagement
• Kathleen Matthews, former executive vice president of Marriott International
• County Council member Kristin Mink (D-Dist. 5)
• Nancy Navarro, former County Council member and former member of the Montgomery County Board of Education
• Jeffrey Slavin, mayor emeritus of the town of Somerset
• Rev. Tim Warner, pastor at Emory Grove United Methodist Church

Jawando said he has also created 12 subcommittees to focus during transition on key issues facing the county.

And he said he wants community members to weigh-in on building the new administration. He intends to schedule six community workshops throughout the county, starting on Nov. 30.

“Bring a neighbor,” Jawando said. “Bring someone who has never come to a county meeting.”

Jawando said he plans to release an action plan for his administration on Dec. 8, and that on that date the county executive’s office will move to the Grey Courthouse Office Building from the Isiah “Ike” Leggett County Executive Building.

Jawando said the move highlights the historical significance of the old courthouse, where Thurgood Marshall argued in 1937 for equal pay on behalf of William B. Gibbs, a Black teacher at the Rockville Colored School.

Other departments in the county’s executive department will stay in the Leggett building.

First steps

Jawando told The Banner on Election Day that his first priority is appointing his cabinet and a new police chief. Former Chief Marc Yamada was asked to resign in September after the release of a critical report from the county’s Office of the Inspector General.

Jawando said he hopes to make the appointment before the new year.

During Wednesday’s press conference, Jawando said he and other council members want the county to have greater flexibility to set differential tax rates, and are drafting a letter to state lawmakers to petition for it. He said he would continue to pursue this goal as county executive.

“No one on the campaign trail thought that a data center should pay the same tax rate as a single-family home, or that a mansion should pay the same rate as a condo,” Jawando said.

Jawando’s other early priorities include bolstering education funding and addressing housing insecurity. He said Wednesday that he wants to ease the burden of Trump administration polices — including mass federal layoffs — on county residents.

“We have to build new businesses. We have to get new good jobs,” he said. “We need a tax base that’s strong enough to support our school system and protect the services that people count on, no matter who’s in the White House.”