(Washington) President-elect Barack Obama has made it official, naming Nancy Sutley to lead the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Sutley is the first prominent member of the LGBT community to earn a senior role in the Democrat’s new administration. Speculation began circulating a week ago that she would be named to the post.

Sutley, 46, holds a bachelor’s degree in government from Cornell University and a master’s in public policy from Harvard.

From 1999-2003 she was a special assistant to EPA administrator Carol Browner.

Following that, she served until 2005 as deputy secretary for policy and intergovernmental relations at the California Environmental Protection Agency and energy adviser to Gov. Gray Davis.

Currently Sutley is a Deputy Mayor of Los Angeles for Energy and Environment and a board member for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

Sutley supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton during the Democratic primary and was a member of her LGBT steering committee.

“President-elect Obama’s nomination of Nancy Sutley is another step toward full equality for gay Americans,” Chuck Wolfe, president of the Gay & Lesbian Leadership Institute, said in a statement.

“It sends a signal to young people that they can participate in their government at its highest levels, regardless of their sexual orientation, gender or ethnicity.”

Obama also announced the other members of his Environmental and Energy team.

He said he will nominate Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado to run the Interior Department. Nobel-prize winning physicist Steven Chu will be energy secretary, and Lisa Jackson, the former head of New Jersey’s environmental department, will head the Environmental Protection Agency.

Carol Browner, a confidante of former Vice President Al Gore, will lead a White House council on energy and climate. Browner headed the Environmental Protection Agency in the Clinton administration.

In making the announcments Obama made clear he plans take energy policy in a sharply different direction from President George W. Bush, promising aggressive moves to address global warming and support research into alternative energy sources such as wind, solar and biofuels.

“America must develop new forms of energy and new ways of using it,” he said.

Obama said the dangers of being too heavily dependent on foreign oil “are eclipsed only by the long-term threat of climate change which, unless we act, will lead to drought and famine abroad, devastating weather patterns and terrible storms on our shores, and disappearance of our coastline at home.”