With help from Allie Bice and Daniel Payne Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. Did someone forward this to you? Subscribe here! Have a tip? Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. When SYLVIA MATHEWS BURWELL moved from being director of the Office of Management and Budget to Health and Human Services secretary in 2014, she only brought one staffer with her: a mid-twenties, low-key policy wonk who had just graduated from college two years prior. SONYA BERNSTEIN went on to serve as Burwell’s deputy chief of staff and then as a senior official at NYC Health + Hospitals, which runs New York City’s public hospitals, when Covid-19 hit. Since joining the Biden transition team in December, Bernstein has quickly become one of the most influential forces shaping the nation’s vaccine and pandemic policy as a senior policy adviser on JEFF ZIENTS’ Covid team based out of the White House. Bernstein played a leading role in designing and then implementing the administration’s program enlisting more than 40,000 pharmacies to receive and administer vaccines and standing up the more than 900 federally run vaccination sites with FEMA that have collectively administered more than 5 million shots, according to the administration. Her former bosses and colleagues refer to her as something of a prodigy who also doesn’t fully believe she is one. “Part of being a wunderkind, the good ones, is that they don't always appreciate how good they are and she's one of those people,” said LESLIE DACH, a senior counsel to Burwell who worked with Bernstein. “She's zero ego,” said NATALIE QUILLIAN, Zients’ deputy, who described Bernstein as an “all-star.” Bernstein declined to be interviewed for this story. “If you wanted to talk about the throughput of the pharmacy channel then she’d talk, but not about this,” said White House spokesperson KEVIN MUNOZ. She’s in her early 30s but she didn’t allow the administration to disclose her exact age. Bernstein’s influence over the country’s response to Covid-19 reflects the power of Zients’ team of roughly 30 people, who have coordinated the federal government’s largest vaccination program ever. Biden’s team was so impressed with the unit that they recently expanded its mission to include managing the U.S.' global vaccination effort. The team is a mixture of former state and city health officials, congressional aides and Obama administration alumni, some of whom have more robust health backgrounds than others. Bernstein was one of a handful of Biden aides who were tapped to work on three separate agency review teams during the transition: HHS, the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security. Former colleagues said they were impressed with Bernstein early on, given her ability to measure up to even the high standards set by Burwell, who, like many Cabinet secretaries, is known as being a demanding boss, according to Dach and other HHS veterans. The fact that “Sonya can be successful staffing someone like Sylvia says a lot about Sonya‘s capabilities,” one former colleague said. Burwell recalls that she first stole Bernstein away from GENE SPERLING when she became OMB director. “I could not be happier for her or happier for our country and now our world because the remit has been broadened,” she said in an interview, also recalling that her kids call Sonya “Dr. Bernstein” after seeing her dressed up as a doctor one Halloween. ”In terms of her age, the level of responsibility and impact that she's having, I think is tremendous,” she said. Bernstein has a unique resume on Zients’ team as a former HHS staffer who was also on the front lines of New York’s efforts to combat the virus during the early days of the pandemic. “Sonya saved a lot of lives during Covid and I can say that unequivocally,” says MATT SIEGLER, her supervisor at NYC Health + Hospitals. “The work of managing the ambulance fleet and getting patients from our hardest-hit hospitals to hospitals with a bit more capacity was operationally something that Sonya really drove...that was her life through COVID,” said Siegler, recalling getting emails from her up until 4 a.m. and then as early as 6 a.m. the next day. Colleagues say she continues to bring that mentality to the current job. She got married in a small ceremony last month, and one administration official recalled that she “couldn't even tell me the time they were getting married. But she could tell you how each pharmacy performs on equity. Or what FEMA sites are seeing dropping demand.” Do you work in the Biden administration? Are you in touch with the White House? Are you LAURA ROSENBERGER? We want to hear from you — and we’ll keep you anonymous: westwingtips@politico.com. Or if you want to stay really anonymous send us a tip through SecureDrop, Signal, Telegram, or Whatsapp here. You can also reach Alex and Theo individually. | 
