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Riley previously worked as an associate at McKinsey & Company and earned a Ph.D. in social policy and an M.Sc. in contemporary Chinese from Oxford, according to his LinkedIn. She joined the ranks of DOGE and was assigned to the Department of Health and Human Services, where Policy reported that she pushed for mass layoffs earlier this year.

A Navy spokesperson said NICU that Riley “brings deep acquisition, technology, and organizational expertise to this work, and we are pleased to welcome him to the team. We thank Rear Admiral Rothenhaus for his service as he enroute to his next mission. We have no additional information to share at this time.”

Former naval aviator Sen. Mark Kelly, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told The Bulwark that Riley was an unorthodox choice. “Usually the chief of naval research is a very senior member of the military or senior leadership with extensive experience in technology, science and engineering,” he said. “That’s the kind of person we’re putting in this position. So I think it’ll be important to see – and I don’t have a lot of information on the background of this candidate – but I know it’s someone fairly young who comes from the DOGE world.”