When Robin Bailey Jr. arrived at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2021, a colleague warned him he was jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. He knew she was right the moment he walked through the door.
“They were very stressed, fatigued, and giving everything that they had,” Bailey told Fortune‘s Kristen Stoller at the Fortune COO Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona. “But the public scrutiny was such that everything you have isn’t good enough.”
Three years later, Bailey had led a sweeping operational overhaul of the agency — more than 160 action items, 90% complete by October 2024. Then he left. And then the DOGE cuts began.
Since January 2025, the CDC has lost nearly a quarter of its workforce — close to 3,000 employees gone through layoffs, forced retirements, and resignations. Bailey, now at federal consulting firm GovStrive, was diplomatic and measured on stage. But his concern was unmistakable.
“We lost a lot of talent,” he said. “Many of the things that we put in place — I’m not sure that they’re operating in the same way.”
