Office of the Chief of Staff

Role at CDC

As CDC's Chief of Staff, Wolff provides strategic counsel to the CDC Director and ensures proactive coordination of agency-wide priorities and policies in direct support of CDC’s mission. In this role, Wolff provides executive oversight and also drives alignment and cross-functional collaboration for several key initiatives including CDC Moving Forward, Employee Engagement, Customer Experience, and other enterprise-wide agency priorities.

Previous experience

Wolff first joined the federal government at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in 2009, working in a variety of roles in the HHS Secretary's office, including director of scheduling and advance, before joining the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) to help manage the response to the 2014 influx of unaccompanied children, and as the first chief of staff for the Office of Refugee Resettlement in 2015. Through her various roles at HHS, she has demonstrated the ability to collaborate with cross-functional teams, often with competing goals, to solve complex, high-stakes problems.

Since re-joining HHS in 2021, Wolff has continued to move the needle to support HHS's goals across public health and human services priorities and led complex policy development and implementation, as well as engagement with diverse partners, including the disability community, child welfare advocates, and local officials. As Counselor to the Secretary, Wolff led work on immigration on behalf of HHS, including day-to-day oversight of the Unaccompanied Children's (UC) program, HHS-wide efforts to support new arrivals. Prior to joining the Secretary's office, Wolff served as senior advisor to the Assistant Secretary for ACF, playing an instrumental role as part of the team responsible for stabilizing the UC program in the wake of unprecedented organizational challenges, resulting in program improvements and ongoing change management efforts to reduce the amount of time children spend in congregate settings.

Education

Wolff has an undergraduate degree in political science from the University of Kansas and a Master of Public Administration from the University of the District of Columbia.