Eleanor Kitzman to Lead Texas Department
July 22, 2011 by Allison Bell
Published 7/21/2011
Eleanor Kitzman, a former South Carolina insurance commissioner, is on track to be the next Texas insurance commissioner.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry, R, will appoint Kitzman to take office Aug. 15 for a
term set to expire Feb. 1, 2013, officials say.
Kitzman will succeed Mike Geeslin, who announced plans to retire in
January.
Kitzman was the director of the South Carolina Department of Insurance from
2005 to 2007 and then went on to become vice president for government relations
at the reinsurance group at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., New York. She resigned
from that job in 2010 to run an unsuccessful race for the Republican nomination
for lieutenant governor.
For the past 6 months, she has been executive director of the South Carolina
Budget and Control Board.
Earlier in her career, she was a clerk for the Texas Supreme Court and an
associate in the Austin, Texas, office of Akin, Gump, Strauss and Feld L.L.P. In
1999, she founded Driver’s Choice Insurance Services, Columbia, S.C., an
automobile insurance agency.
She has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Houston and a law degree
from South Texas College of Law.
– Allison Bell
