Robin Carnahan.
Robin Carnahan
Administrator at The General Services Administration
The U.S. Senate confirmed Robin Carnahan to lead the General Services Administration (GSA) in June 2021, which meant she took over at a time of sharp change for the scopious agency tasked to act as the federal government’s property manager and buyer.
The last full-time administrator caused a national ruckus when she delayed ascertaining Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election. The move cast an unusually bright, and harsh, light on what’s normally a behind-the-scenes position.
Carnahan, a former Missouri secretary of state, has restored near-anonymity to the role of GSA administrator. In the commercial real estate world — particularly in the D.C. region where the federal government is one of the industry’s thirstiest customers — Carnahan is a known entity. Outside of it, not so much. And that might be her most powerful impact in the last 12 months.
Otherwise, Carnahan has spent much of the past year helping manage GSA’s end of the federal infrastructure bill. The agency got about $3.4 billion to spend, mainly on what are known as land ports of entry on the U.S.’s borders, according to an April 2022 interview Carnahan did with St. Louis Public Radio.
Such ports fall within the GSA’s remit. It owns or leases over 376.9 million square feet in 9,000 buildings. That can mean many billions in contracts for property and brokerage firms in a given year. “We’re the biggest landlord in the country,” Carnahan told the public radio station. “And the GSA also leases commercial buildings on behalf of federal partners. So it’s one of the biggest tenants in the country in that way.”
Carnahan has also been ahead on an initiative that might seem both mundane and quite powerful to the average American, especially given the GSA’s recent past: making the agency and its public-facing work more customer friendly. In December, the Biden administration announced a general federal government initiative to do just that, in particular through better use of technology.
The GSA, given that so much customer interaction happens within its walls, is a big part of that.
