ST. PAUL - Minnesota’s commissioner of employment and economic development, Katie Clark Sieben, is leaving her post and being replaced by Shawntera Hardy, Gov. Mark Dayton’s deputy chief of staff, the St. Paul Pioneer Press has learned.
Sieben, who worked in Dayton’s first campaign for governor, served as the top jobs commissioner for five years. At DEED, as the Department of Employment and Economic Development is known, Sieben steered a 1,500-employee agency, charged with wooing job-making companies and paying out more than a $1 billion in unemployment benefits.
In 2011, Dayton appointed her to run the state’s trade offices, housed within DEED, and appointed her two years later to run the agency. During his 2010 campaign for governor she served as his finance director.
Neither in her note to colleagues nor a memo from the governor’s office about the management change, both of which were obtained by the Pioneer Press, mention what Sieben plans to do next.
Hardy, who will replace Sieben later this month, has been a Dayton deputy chief of staff since last year, working on both crisis management and to diversify the state’s workforce.
