Sandberg says that Summers "was very influential in decisions involving other causes he was interested in."
Mathews, now the deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, says one example is Summers' work with the Global AIDS Vaccine Initiative--an issue that falls more in the realm of science than Treasury.
Mathews served as chief of staff at the Treasury Department while Summers was deputy secretary. Summers steadily rose up from the posts of deputy and under secretary until he was handpicked by outgoing Secretary Robert Rubin to be his successor in the spring of 1999.
The Cabinet-level post of treasury secretary sits at the top of a 140,000 person-strong bureaucracy, which includes the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), the Secret Service, as well as 40 percent of federal law enforcement.
It was in his role as secretary, colleagues say, that Summers gained the managerial skills they felt would serve him well as Harvard's president.
Summers was able to motivate his deputies in an atmosphere which often made it difficult to get things done.
"I think the Treasury Department is like a university in that it is not a place where you bark out orders and expect bureaucrats to fulfill your whim," Waldman says.
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