Rhonda Carter

Deputy Chief of Staff

Rhonda M. Carter serves as Deputy Chief of Staff at the U.S. Department of Transportation, and was appointed to the position in November 2015 by Secretary Anthony Foxx.

Prior to joining DOT, Carter was the White House Liaison in the Office of the Secretary at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), where she advised Secretary Ernest J. Moniz and other senior officials on a wide array of personnel, operations, and management issues. She began her tenure with President Obama’s Administration on January 21, 2009 as an aide in the Office of the White House Counsel.

She previously worked for the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition Team as Assistant to the General Counsel, and at the Center for American Progress, a non-partisan think tank in Washington, D.C., as Special Assistant for Domestic Policy. Carter started her career coordinating a federally-funded program focused on the matriculation of low-income, first-generation students at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Born in Seoul, South Korea, Carter spent her childhood in South Central Los Angeles, California, and subsequently moved to Federal Way, Washington, a suburb south of Seattle, where she attended junior high and high school. She is a graduate of Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California. She and her husband, Decker Ngongang, reside in Washington, D.C.