Ruth Chandler Cook

Ruth Chandler Cook joined the Department of the Treasury in 2012 and leads a broad range of Treasury-wide programs including employee engagement, performance management, alignment, Labor & Employee Relations, Workforce Vitality, Recognition, and a number of other programs impacting the Departments over 100,000 person workforce. As Director of Workforce Excellence & Engagement, Ruth has responsibility for building and sustaining a culture of engagement across Treasury and its Bureaus. She is also responsible for designing and implementing workforce strategies that result in resilient, high performing teams. Under Ruth’s leadership key policy initiatives are developed and leaders Treasury-wide are advised on labor management considerations as well as efficient and effective change management tactics. Her responsibilities include setting the agency's workforce policies, analyzing workforce conditions and developing strategies to meet the current and future needs of the Treasury Department while prioritizing the alignment of its workforce with the strategic goals and objectives of the organization. Ruth led a Treasury-wide employee performance management reform effort which consolidated 16 disparate performance management programs to one, and positioned the Department for the utilization of an Integrated Talent Management System. In addition, she led the execution of a one Treasury approach toward employee engagement known as the “Engage Everyone” campaign. She executed these Department-wide strategies through collaborative communities of practice among Treasury and its Bureaus leaders including labor organizations, performance, learning, diversity & inclusion and other key practitioners. Ruth has also been instrumental in expanding the use of human capital data and analytics across the Department. For example, she led the development of dynamic dashboards to display FEVS data in new and innovative ways to include the use of scatter plot charts. The new visualizations of the data allow leaders and staff to zero in on successes and opportunities at a glance. As a result of these efforts the Department has increased participation in engagement action planning as well as provided greater visibility of FEVS data across the organization. In fact in 2016 Treasury saw improvement in 67 of 71 questions or (94 percent) of the FEVS survey with gains across each index. Ruth earned a Master degree in Human Resources Management with a focus on Strategic Human Capital Management from Georgetown University. She is certified as a Senior Professional in Human Resources Management (SPHR) by the Human Resources Certification Institute and as a Society for Human Resources Management – Senior Certified Professional (SHRM-SCP).