United States: Director Christopher Wray has named Anna Middlebrook as the assistant director of the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity Affairs at FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. The office endeavors to ensure a working environment free from discrimination, retaliation, and disruption.Ms. Middlebrook most recently served as the deputy director of the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity for the National Labor Relations Board in Washington. Ms. Middlebrook has more than 25 years of experience in federal equal employment programs.
She joined the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in 1997 as an appellate attorney in the Office of Federal Operations. In 1999, she began work as an administrative judge for the EEOC, deciding discrimination complaints of federal employees. In 2002, Ms. Middlebrook became the national hearings coordinator at the EEOC, supporting the agency’s leadership for the federal sector hearings program. She also advised 98 administrative judges, determining and implementing policies for the effective, efficient, expeditious, and consistent processing of cases and the conduct of conferences and hearings. Between 2010 and 2012, Ms. Middlebrook was the special assistant to the EEOC inspector general and updated the inspector general’s quality assurance program, among other accomplishments and assignments.
Ms. Middlebrook was selected as the deputy director of the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in 2015. The NLRB protects employees’ rights to organize and addresses unfair labor practices. Ms. Middlebrook helped NLRB leaders advance fairness in its policies, programs, and practices in recruitment and retention while building and maintaining workforce diversity. She also devised a strategy to make the NLRB accountable to the EEOC’s Management Directive 715—to ensure a diverse and inclusive workforce—and helped bring the agency into compliance with federal requirements to provide employees reasonable workplace accommodations. Ms. Middlebrook earned a bachelor’s degree in English language and literature from Spelman College in Atlanta and a juris doctorate from the University of Baltimore. Before joining the federal government, she worked in private law practice in California.
