Kathy Stack, a 27-year veteran of the White House Office of Management and Budget, is the recipient of the 2023 Paul L. Posner Federal Budgeting Career Legacy Award.
The award, sponsored by the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University and presented this year for the ninth time, recognizes those who over a career made an important and lasting contribution to the federal government’s budget process and institutions and demonstrated high personal integrity and dedication to public service.
The award was presented May 31 at the annual lunch of the Office of Management and Budget/Bureau of the Budget Alumni Association in Washington, D.C.
“Kathy Stack embodies the best of federal career service,” said Steve Redburn, a former senior OMB official who presented the award to Stack. “Over her career in the White House Office of Management and Budget, she used every opportunity to enlarge the role of budget analysts and bring to bear the best evidence available to inform wise policy decisions and more effective use of resources. Her many contributions show her unique ability to combine creativity and practicality in the service of better government performance.”
Having served for seven years as Deputy Associate Director for Education, Labor, and Income Maintenance programs, Stack culminated her 27-year federal career at OMB by launching and leading its first “evidence team,” working to strengthen federal agency capacity to use evidence, evaluation, data, and outcome-focused program designs to improve program effectiveness.
After retiring from federal service in 2015, Stack served for several years as vice president at the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, where she helped federal, state, and local governments build capacity to use data and evidence to improve decision-making. As a Senior Fellow at the Yale Tobin Center for Economic Policy and an independent consultant, she continues to produce creative ideas for strengthening the use of data and evidence to improve the delivery of public services at all levels of government.
On receiving the Posner award, Stack stated, “What an incredible honor to receive this award. I owe every success in my OMB career to amazing partners across the institution who joined forces to earn the trust of OMB and White House policy officials and creatively use policy, budget, and management levers to drive taxpayer resources to better uses.”
The Posner award is named for the late Professor Paul L. Posner, who served as director of the Schar School of Policy and Government’s Master’s in Public Administration program at Mason. He was former managing director for strategic issues at the U.S. General Accountability Office for 14 years, where he worked for 30 years. He died in July, 2017, at age 70. Past recipients of the award can be found here.
The annual award is made possible by a grant to Mason by alumni of the Bureau of the Budget, a group now merged with the Office of Management and Budget Alumni Association. It is administered by the Schar School’s Center on Nonprofits, Philanthropy, and Social Enterprise.