New Interior Chief Savors a Steep Learning Curve

Sally Jewell bounded up a granite boulder near the peak of Old Rag Mountain and turned back to her hiking companion, who was staring up at the smooth rock that offered no obvious hand- or footholds. “Trust your feet,” she said. That mountaineer’s mantra has carried Ms. Jewell through a lifetime of challenging ascents and a varied career as petroleum engineer, banker and retail executive. On April 12, she was sworn in as the 51st secretary of the interior. Ms. Jewell, 57, who has climbed Mount Rainier seven times along with some of the world’s highest peaks, said that she is happiest on the steepest part of the learning curve. A woman of untamed energy, competitiveness and confidence in the boardroom and on a mountain trail, she is undertaking perhaps the greatest challenge of her life as she assumes command of a huge bureaucracy in a city that festers barely above sea level. Like many successful corporate titans who have come to Washington before her, she will learn that running a business or a university board is not necessarily adequate training for a top government post. She noted during a five-hour round-trip hike of Old Rag, for example, that no rational business executive would cut an operating budget across the board, as the federal budget process known as the sequester requires. And she said that no matter how determined she is to spend her time promoting outdoor recreation or increasing renewable energy production, events can rudely intrude. Ms. Jewell underwent weeks of grueling briefings for what turned out to be a relatively mild Senate confirmation hearing. The toughest questions from Republicans concerned her role on the board of the National Parks Conservation Association, a mainly volunteer group that advocates for parks and park employees and that has sometimes sued the federal government. Before taking office, she spent scores of hours with senior political and career employees in a small conference room at the department headquarters in Foggy Bottom, learning the physics of oil spill containment gear, the habitat of the Gunnison sage-grouse and the politics of an obscure road-building project through the Izembek Wilderness of Alaska. She likened the experience to drinking from a fire hose...more