Sylvia Mary Burwell (née Mathews; born June 24, 1965) is an American government and non-profit executive who is president of the Harvard Board of Overseers and was the 15th president of American University from 2017 to 2024. Burwell was the first woman to serve as the university's president. A member of the Democratic Party, Burwell earlier served as the 22nd United States secretary of health and human services from 2014 to 2017 and as 39th director of the Office of Management and Budget from 2013 to 2014.
A West Virginia native, Burwell first worked for the United States government in Washington, D.C., during the presidency of Bill Clinton. Burwell helped form the National Economic Council in 1993. Burwell later served as Chief of Staff to Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin, Deputy White House Chief of Staff to Erskine Bowles, and finally, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Between her times in government, Burwell served as president of Walmart's charitable foundation focused on ending hunger, beginning in January 2012. Burwell was earlier the president of the Global Development Program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where her program focused on combating world poverty through agricultural development, financial services for the poor, and global libraries. She was chief operating officer and executive director before its reorganization in 2006. She joined the Gates Foundation in 2001, at the end of the Clinton presidency. President Barack Obama nominated Burwell to lead the United States Department of Health and Human Services on April 11, 2014. Her nomination was confirmed by the Senate on June 5, 2014, by a vote of 78–17. She served as secretary until the end of the Obama administration.
Mathews was born and raised in Hinton, West Virginia, a small town with a population of approximately 3,000. Her mother, Cleo (née Maroudas) Mathews, was a teacher who also served as Hinton's mayor from 2001 to 2009; her father, Dr. William Peter Mathews, an optometrist. Her father presided over the local Episcopal Church when there was no minister.
Her maternal grandparents, Vasiliki (Mpakares) and Dennis N. Maroudas, were Greek immigrants, as were her paternal grandparents. Her grandparents owned a sweet shop in Hinton. Mathews has one older sister, four years her senior.
Mathews first showed an interest in politics while still in grade school, when she became involved with her best friend's father's campaign for county commissioner and Jay Rockefeller's first campaign for governor. Mathews served as her student body president and played on her school's basketball team. She graduated as valedictorian of her high school class.
In 1982, she was a Youth For Understanding exchange student in Japan. While still in college, she served as an intern for West Virginia Congressman Nick Rahall, as a governor's aide to Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, and as a researcher for the Michael Dukakis 1988 presidential campaign.
Mathews earned a Bachelor of Arts degree government from Harvard University in 1987. She then enrolled at the University of Oxford, where she became a Rhodes Scholar at Worcester College, and, in her spare time, a rower. She graduated from Oxford with a second bachelor's degree in philosophy, politics, and economics. She has since been appointed as an honorary fellow of Worcester College.
Early career and the Clinton White House
Mathews began her career in 1990 as an associate with the New York consulting firm McKinsey & Company. In 1992, Mathews joined the Bill Clinton 1992 presidential campaign and after Clinton's election led the economic team for the president-elect. Following Clinton's inauguration, Mathews, working with Robert Rubin, helped establish the National Economic Council (NEC). She served as the first staff director of the NEC from 1993 to 1995. While Mathews was at NEC, the White House pushed for healthcare reform. Mathews was among those in the administration who advocated for finding ways, apart from legislation, to curb healthcare costs.
When Rubin became secretary of the treasury in 1995, Mathews was named to be his chief of staff. She testified before a Senate committee during the Whitewater investigations regarding her search of Vince Foster's garbage and the fate of the documents she discovered. Mathews told the committee she had been looking for an indication as to why Foster had committed suicide and denied ordering any documents destroyed.
In 1997 Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles recruited Mathews to be his deputy chief of staff after being impressed with her intelligence during an Oval Office meeting. Mathews became one of two deputy chiefs of staff, serving alongside John Podesta. She was deputy chief of staff for policy, charged with the task of keeping the White House focused on its agenda amid the impeachment of Clinton.
Bowles later praised her as smart, hardworking, and skilled at getting people to work together, saying, "I've never known one person who does all those things as well." Bowles resigned in 1998, at which point Podesta was named chief of staff, and Mathews moved to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), where she took the role of deputy director under Jack Lew. Mathews remained at OMB for the remainder of Clinton's presidency during a time of three budget surpluses.
Charitable foundations and other private sector activities
In 2001 Mathews relocated to Seattle, Washington, to work for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the largest philanthropic organization in the United States, as an executive vice president. The following year, she became chief operating officer of the Foundation. The Foundation reorganized in 2006, naming Mathews president of the foundation's Global Development Program. Mathews was involved in awarding grants to improve health outcomes in the developing world, including stopping the spread of HIV and other diseases and making contraception more readily available.
She served on the board of the University of Washington Medical Center from 2002 to 2005. During that time, the board oversaw an upgrade to the medical center's electronic medical records and system for tracking patient outcomes. The board was also tasked with setting up a compliance program to fix a Medicare billing irregularity that had resulted in a settlement with federal investigators. She was a Director of MetLife and Metropolitan Life Insurance Company from January 2004 to April 2013. Mathews also served on the boards of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Nike Foundation Advisory Group.
In 2005 Mathews was chosen by the Wall Street Journal as one of The 50 Women to Watch – 2005 worldwide for her work with the Gates Foundation. In 2008, known as Sylvia Mathews Burwell following her 2007 marriage, she was named Obama/Biden Transition Agency Review Lead for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Burwell remained with the Gates Foundation until 2011. She officially joined the Wal-Mart Foundation, which focuses on ending hunger in the United States, as the organization's president in January 2012. Burwell relocated to Bentonville, Arkansas, for the position.
Office of Management and Budget Director