Brennan Will Be First Woman To Lead the U.S. Postal Service

With Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe announcing his retirement today, the U.S. Postal Service's Board of Governors named USPS Chief Operating Officer Megan J. Brennan as his replacement.

When Donahoe ends his 39 years with the agency on Feb. 1, Brennan will become the first woman to hold the position of Postmaster General, 240 years after the Continental Congress appointed Benjamin Franklin to the job.

Megan J. Brennan

Donahoe started with USPS as a clerk and became PMG four years ago. He gave no reason for leaving what Dead Tree Edition has called "the worst CEO job in America".

Here is Brennan's biography as it appears on the Postal Service's web site:

Megan J. Brennan was named Chief Operating Officer and executive vice president in December 2010. Brennan leads the continuous improvement of the entire postal network operation as well as the allocations of people and resources. She reports to the Postmaster General.

Brennan has responsibility for the day-to-day activities of 491,000 career employees working in more than 31,000 facilities supported by a fleet of over 200,000 vehicles. She is responsible for Post Offices, delivery and retail operations, facilities and the mail processing network. Reporting to Brennan are the vice presidents of Delivery and Post Office Operations, Facilities, Network Operations, Retail Channel Operations and the seven vice presidents of Area Operations.

Previously she was vice president of Eastern Area Operations. As the senior postal official she oversaw an area that encompassed Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Delaware, Kentucky, Central and South Jersey, Western New York and parts of Virginia and Indiana. Reporting to the deputy postmaster general and chief operating officer, she was responsible for postal operations, including processing and distribution, customer service and administrative operations.

A 27-year veteran of the Postal Service, Brennan served as vice president of Northeast Area Operations from May 2005 until being named vice president of Eastern Area Operations. Prior to that, she was manager of Operations Support for the Northeast Area. In this capacity, she was responsible for coordinating and integrating processing and distribution, transportation and delivery operations throughout the Northeast Area.

Brennan also held the headquarters position of manager of Field Support and Integration, where she worked directly for the Chief Operating Officer.

Brennan joined the Postal Service in 1986 as a letter carrier in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and began her management career as a delivery and collection supervisor. She has in-depth experience in both line management and support positions, having worked at the district, area and headquarters levels. She served as district manager, Springfield, Massachusetts, and plant manager for the Lehigh Valley and Reading, Pennsylvania, processing and distribution facilities.

Brennan is a graduate of Immaculata College in Pennsylvania. She is a Sloan Fellow and holds a Master of Business Administration degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.