Amy Gleason, a former emergency room nurse, became a healthcare technician, but was scared. It was 2010 and he couldn’t understand what was behind his daughter Morgan’s strange symptoms constellations.
When Morgan was finally diagnosed with a rare and potentially life-threatening autoimmune disorder more than a year later, Gleason decided to empower other patients and faced no similar delay in diagnosis.
“If you’ve seen a doctor bring all of these visits and activities together on one screen, they’ll probably wonder if this 10 or 11 year old would always go to the doctor,” Gleason said in a 2020 TEDX talk. “And maybe it caused a faster diagnosis.”
Until recently, 53-year-old Gleason was a relatively inconspicuous healthcare data crunch with a passion for simplifying access to electronic medical records.
Then, at the end of February, the White House announced that Gleeson had been appointed as a proxy administrator for government efficiency and had promoted her to a prominent position in the Trump administration.
Gleeson previously worked on health data-related projects in US digital services, the predecessor of US digital service Doge, which overlapped with Trump’s first term and the Biden administration.
However, the White House has not provided details on why it will accurately select Gleason and lead Doge, a task force unit at the heart of the administration’s efforts to streamline the federal government.
The move has led many to question whether Gleason is really in charge or whether power is with Elon Musk, the wealthiest man in the world and a special government employee with Doge-face.
For weeks, the administration avoided questions about who was actually at the helm. The White House said Gleason was acting manager only after he was unable to answer who was in charge of the agency when questioned in court. It appears Gleason hasn’t made public comments since the White House announced she was Doge’s top official.
The administration also makes little clear about who else is working for Doge, and what they will do, despite Musk’s claims of transparency.
Even with the Gleeson title, the mask still seems upset. Like on recent Tuesday, Trump called Doge “beyond Elon Musk,” sparking new legal questions about the group’s operations. The working relationship between Musk and Gleason is unknown, and a Doge spokesman did not respond to NBC News questions on Gleason’s job responsibilities on Friday.
Gleason also did not respond to requests for comment on this story. In an interview, my former colleague explained where she works as a very intelligent and most valuable asset.
“He’s exactly the kind of person who needs this role,” said Dr. Greg Alexander, a pediatrician in London, Ohio. “She always tried to do the right thing.”
Still, some former colleagues worry that in her Doge role, Gleason is worried about inadvertently conspired to cut programs that have personal importance to her. Doge threatens dramatic budget cuts for federal health agencies, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.
The diagnosis of Gleason’s daughter, now in her mid-20s, is known as dermatomyositis. A very rare disease is a type of juvenile myositis in which the child’s immune system attacks its own cells and tissues.
The treatments discovered over the years thanks to our partnership with the NIH have improved the prognosis of juvenile myositis, said James Minow, executive director of the Advocacy Organization JM Foundation, who was board member from 2014 to 2018 and vice president of research in 2018, according to a LinkedIn profile.
But as the Trump administration is trying to cut NIH grants, Minow said he is worried that Doge could hinder rare disease research, which Gleason’s family and many other families rely on.
“Amy is a very thorough thinker and I think she will be the one who will make a very solid and rational recommendation to President, seeing her fulfill what he considers as his mission to reduce the size of the government,” Minnow said. “Obviously, Cure JM wants to do everything possible to protect NIH’s investments.”
Gleeson’s friends and former colleagues describe her as apolitical. From 2018 to 2021, she worked for US Digital Services, an agency created by the Obama administration after the chaotic deployment of Healthcare.gov. Many of her stints were dedicated to partnering with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to improve patient access to medical records, she said in a 2020 TEDX talk.
Later there, she worked on the White House Coronavirus Task Force data team, creating databases from hospitals and labs where the governor and the public relied on tracking the virus. Her LinkedIn profile reported that the New York Times had been reintroduced at its agency in late December prior to Trump’s inauguration, but she re-subscribed to US digital services as a senior advisor this January.
A long history of the private sector
Gleason also works in the private sector of various healthcare management companies and startups. She held a vice president position at Allscripts, which provides software for electronic medical records, and worked for Caresync, a Florida-based medical technology startup.
Her LinkedIn profile adds that from 2021 to 2024, she is the product vice president of Main Street Health, which provides care to rural people, and provides care at Russell Street Ventures, dedicated to launching innovative healthcare.
Both Main Street Health and Russell Street Venture were founded by entrepreneur Brad Smith, an early senior doge member who was previously appointed as head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation in 2020 during Trump’s first administration.
Smith did not respond to requests for comment. An anonymous source who spoke with The New York Times said Smith began advising on mask cost-cutting moves late last year, bringing Gleason to talks. NBC News has not reviewed the report.
Tom Cook, a retired healthcare executive who worked closely with Gleason over 15 years ago, said her position at Doge was “a kind of curveball.”
“I put my politics on my sleeve. I don’t trust Elon Musk at all in this role. I trust her entirely,” he said. “I’m sure she’ll use her voice to be strong and whether she wants to hear the people above her, she’s a straight shooter.”
Cook explained that Gleason has a foaming personality and a mentality for non-flapping work.
“Professionally, I was surprised at her ability to put a lot on her plate to finish it in a very short period of time,” he said.
And on a personal level, “She’s seen her really thoughtful with people who might have had a slight interaction,” he said. “She just has a path with people.”
Others were surprised by her Doge title. “It appears to have come out of nowhere,” a former healthcare IT colleague told NBC News via LinkedIn message.
“I was shocked to hear of my appointment as Doge, a fierce and dedicated patient advocate,” wrote a former colleague who had known Gleason for 15 years and spoke on condition of anonymity. “To go from such a position of kindness to a position that excludes the work of thousands of working parents seems like such a dichotomy of value.”
Gleason, a graduate of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, is an avid football fan who likes to guide friends who take root with non-Tennessee volunteers, said pediatrician Alexander. He added that she has a “risqué humor” and that she loves to travel.
Gleason’s interest in streamlined medical records and other improvements to patients dates back decades. In 2021, she started out as an emergency room nurse, “I realized how powerful healthcare technology is,” and “Tell me where it hurts,” podcast.
Gleeson says the best career advice she received comes from her parents. She told another healthcare podcast in 2023 that her father had told her that her mistakes were opportunities for learning, and her mom encouraged her to follow her dreams.
“I had a pretty amazing career trying out a lot of new things and following my passion when developing new things,” she told the podcast.
