Gov. Janet Mills will formally nominate Sara Gagné-Holmes as commissioner of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Mills’ office made the announcement Thursday, less than two months after Gagné-Holmes was appointed to lead the state’s largest agency on an acting basis following the departure of Jeanne Lambrew.

“Acting Commissioner Gagné-Holmes cares deeply about the health, safety, and welfare of Maine people, and she has dedicated nearly her entire professional career to improving the lives of people across this state,” Mills said in a statement. “Her deep policy and managerial experience, her intimate knowledge of the department – including both its strengths and its challenges – along with the respect she has earned from her colleagues, lawmakers and others, and her collaborative approach to solving problems make her the right person at the right time to take on this important role.”

Sara Gagné-Holmes

DHHS is a sprawling department with more than 3,000 employees across eight offices. Gagné-Holmes had been Lambrew’s deputy commissioner for five years.

“The Department has made great strides in advancing our mission of ensuring health, safety, resilience, and opportunity for Maine people,” she said in a statement. “We have more work to do to fully implement our progress, better meet the needs of the Maine people we serve, and continue building trust through listening, transparency, and accountability.”

All Cabinet appointees require confirmation by the state Senate, although that chamber is controlled by Democrats. Gagné-Holmes first will appear at a hearing before the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee.

A Sanford native and graduate of Bowdoin College and the University of Maine School of Law, Gagné-Holmes has a long history in health care, first as an attorney and later in the public sector. She was a health policy and legal adviser to former Gov. John Baldacci before transitioning to the nonprofit advocacy world.

Mills has enjoyed remarkable consistency in her Cabinet during her two terms as governor. Lambrew is the only commissioner who has left the administration. She announced in May that she was stepping down as commissioner to take a teaching position at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a job as director of health care reform for The Century Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based organization. Lambrew had been in Mills’ Cabinet since the beginning of her first term and oversaw the state’s pandemic response.