| Spero |
Spero served seven months as acting commissioner from late November 2005 until June 2006, bridging the terms of Robert Bonner and Ralph Basham, the current commissioner.
Spero is a career Customs official who started out as an administrative intern in the legacy Customs Service. She advanced through the ranks to serve as assistant commissioner in two parts of the agency.
Spero directed the office in charge of managing the transition of the Customs Service from the Treasury Department to the new Department of Homeland Security in 2003 and the merger of Customs, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization, and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to form a single border security agency.
She was designated deputy commissioner in April 2004.
During the preceding four years, Spero was assistant commissioner for strategic trade, which managed regulatory audit programs and analyzed trade statistics to identify efforts for skirting the nation’s customs laws and design enforcement strategies. The Office of Strategic Trade was folded last year into a new Office of International Trade.
Spero also spent five years as assistant commissioner for human resources management.
