State Department’s redesign chief quits after three months

WASHINGTON — The senior State Department official charged with overseeing U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s effort to overhaul the agency has resigned after just three months on the job, according to a department official.

Maliz Beams was named counselor to the department on Aug. 17, according to her biography on the State Department’s website. She has decided to return to her home in Boston, and Christine Ciccone, Tillerson’s deputy chief of staff, will step in to lead the redesign effort, according to the official, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters.

The departure is a blow for Tillerson, who had brought in Beams to oversee the signature initiative of his term so far — a restructuring intended to eliminate inefficiencies and overlap at the department. The plan has run up against resistance within the department and in Congress, where critics say it has contributed to key positions going unfilled and plummeting morale.

Sen. Bob Corker, the Tennessee Republican who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has said Tillerson’s staff isn’t “anywhere close to having a plan to present relative to the reforms that they want to make there.”

In the face of such criticism, the State Department official said Tillerson will ask Congress to expedite approval of nominees for undersecretary for management and legal adviser.