Ioanna Thomas Kefalas and Alexander Nicholas Mark Niejelow were married Nov. 10 at New World Symphony hall in Miami Beach. Shaun Donovan, who became a Universal Life minister for the occasion, officiated.
Until 2017, Mrs. Niejelow, 34, worked as the adviser to Mr. Donovan who was the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, and until 2014 was the special assistant to him while he was the secretary in the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, both in Washington. She also worked on several political campaigns, including in 2008 as the deputy campaign manager in John Kerry’s senate race in Boston, and from 2007 to 2008 as a field director in various states for Hillary Clinton’s first presidential campaign. The bride graduated from Boston University.
She is a daughter of Foula T. Kefalas and Thomas K. Kefalas of Somersworth, N.H., who own a restaurant in Rouses Point, N.Y., and in Sommersworth.
Mr. Niejelow, 36, is the senior vice president for cybersecurity coordination and advocacy in New York at Mastercard. He graduated from Duke and the Durham Police Academy. He received a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
He is the son of Judith Rodin and the stepson of Paul R. Verkuil of Miami Beach. The groom’s mother retired as the president of the Rockefeller Foundation in New York and as the president of the University of Pennsylvania. She is now an adviser for several start-up technology companies, and on several boards including the New World Symphony and the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa, which is based in Nairobi, Kenya. His stepfather, a lawyer, and president emeritus of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., is currently a legal consultant focusing on law and economic regulation. From 2010 to 2015, he was the chairman of the Administrative Conference of the United States in Washington.
The couple met in April 2014 while working at the Obama White House. He was the director of cybersecurity on the National Security Council, as well as the chief of staff of the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator. She was Mr. Donovan’s director in the Office of Management and Budget. The first digits Mr. Niejelow asked for from Ms. Kefalas were not her phone number, but her Social Security number so that the C.I.A. could run security clearance for classified documents he had to give her boss. The couple got into a good-natured tiff over who had higher security clearance, and a few days later Mr. Niejelow asked her to the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
