STATE: “A senior State Department official appointed by the Trump administration is leaving the agency after just three months on the job, CNN has learned.
Maliz Beams had been appointed as counselor — a senior position not requiring congressional confirmation — over the summer. In this role, she served as a special adviser to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and was closely involved in his efforts to reorganize the agency.
A State Department spokesperson confirmed to CNN Beams would be ‘stepping away from her role at the Department of State and is returning to her home in Boston.’…
The role of State Department counselor is not strongly defined, which has allowed past secretaries of state to task their counselors with a variety of different projects. Historically, it has been filled by both career State Department employees and political appointees, and office-holders have held similarly varied degrees of influence over the secretaries they’ve served.”
-Michelle Kosinski and Laura Koran, “Top State Department official out after 3 months,” CNN Politics, CNN.com, Nov. 27, 2017 10:30pm