Margaret Pearson

Margaret Ponds Pearson is the Associate Director of Retirement Services for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. In this capacity, she directs the activities of multiple staff and line organizations in administering the Civil Service and Federal Employees Retirement Systems with an annual disbursement of over $66.8 billion in benefits.

Prior to her current role, Ms. Pearson served as the Acting Chief Financial Officer (CFO). In this capacity, she oversaw all aspects of OPM's financial management, budget, performance management, risk management, internal control, and financial audit activities which includes all fiduciary responsibilities for the agency's administrative and employee earned benefit assets totaling over $1 trillion. Prior to her current role, Ms. Pearson served as the Deputy CFO, directing day-to-day operations for OPM’s Office of the CFO (OCFO).

Her leadership responsibilities included providing oversight to two concurrent financial management transformations that stand to fundamentally improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the service OCFO delivers to internal and external customers.

For more than nine years Ms. Pearson has served as OPM’s Associate CFO for Budget and Performance/Performance Improvement Officer (PIO) within OPM, providing advice and guidance to the CFO and OPM executive leadership on budget formulation, execution, and performance reporting for the agency. She successfully resolved critical budgetary resource and performance challenges brought on by changes in leadership priorities, legislation, audit findings and external stakeholders.

Before entering public service, Ms. Pearson was a consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC and QED Consulting where she was a leader in the federal financial management and performance practice areas.

Ms. Pearson holds a master’s degree from the Heinz School of Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University and a Bachelor of Arts in American Government from the University of Virginia. A native Washingtonian, Margaret, and her family reside in the Washington, DC metropolitan area.