The U.S. Railroad Retirement Board (RRB) has appointed Spiridoula Mavrothalasitis as Director of Hearings and Appeals. In this position, Ms. Mavrothalasitis will be responsible for overseeing reviews of unfavorable claims determinations by hearings officers in the agency's Bureau of Hearings and Appeals. The bureau is responsible for handling appeals on a nationwide basis in order to issue decisions in a timely, efficient manner. Her appointment was effective September 14.
Ms. Mavrothalasitis previously worked at the Illinois Department of Insurance, where she oversaw the Legal Division, including the agency’s Hearing Officer and Prosecutor, and also served as a member of the department’s executive management team.
Prior to that, she oversaw the City of Chicago’s Workers Compensation Division and served as an Assistant Corporation Counsel in the city’s Employment Litigation Division. Ms. Mavrothalasitis also was an Assistant Inspector General in the Office of Executive Inspector General for the Agencies of the Illinois Governor.
She started her legal career as an associate attorney at DLA Piper Rudnick LLP and Jenner & Block LLP, handling a variety of business litigation matters.
Ms. Mavrothalasitis graduated from Northwestern University in 1997 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and a minor in French, and she earned her Juris Doctor degree from the University of Michigan Law School in 2003.
She succeeds Rachel L. Simmons, who had been Director of Hearings and Appeals since January 2012. Ms. Simmons retired in June 2020 with more than 36 years of service at the RRB.
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An independent federal agency headquartered in Chicago, the RRB administers about $13.3 billion a year in benefits under the federal Railroad Retirement and Railroad Unemployment Insurance Acts covering the nation’s railroad workers and their families.