Ms. Drenan E. Dudley was elected as a Director of the U.S. Marshals Survivors Benefit Fund Board of Directors in March, 2020.
Ms. Dudley was raised in Blacksburg, Virginia, and graduated from the University of South Carolina (USC) in 1993 where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and English. At USC she was a Student Government Senator and Public Relations Officer. She was also a member of the Equestrian Team and a member of Omicron Delta Kappa, a national leadership honor society for students ranked in the top thirty-five percent of their class.
Ms. Dudley attended the University of Georgia where she received a Master of Public Administration in 1997 with a concentration in budget, finance, and local government. She was the President of the Georgia Students for Public Administration and a recipient of the Georgia City County Managers Association Scholarship.
Ms. Dudley was employed after college at the South Carolina Employment Security Commission as a program representative and then at the Maricopa Association of Governments which serves as the regional planning agency for the metropolitan Phoenix, AZ area.
Ms. Dudley began working for the U.S. Government when she accepted the position of Director of Projects and Grants for U.S. Senator Fritz Hollings from South Carolina. Since 2005, she has served on the Professional staff of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee. As such, she has appropriations and oversight staff responsibilities for Department of Homeland Security programs and for supplemental disaster response and recovery funding. During the 115th Congress, she was named a Stennis Congressional Fellow.
Ms. Dudley watched her brother, Chris Dudley, rise through the U.S. Marshal Service (USMS) ranks from an Intern in 1990, to Deputy U.S. Marshal, and eventually to become the career Deputy Director of the USMS until his passing in November 2012. Chris was dedicated to the USMS mission and to those with whom he served. She now honors his memory as an active member of the USMSBF Board of Directors.
Ms. Dudley supports volunteer and non-profit activities including the Arlington County, Virginia, Foster Care and Adoption program, the “Passion to Progress” program, which is a Jack and Larkin Dudley Family Endowment, and the “Look Ahead Leader” program formed by Senior Stennis Fellows in 2018.