Dr. Nancy Rowena Kingsbury

Dr. Nancy Rowena Kingsbury Leuba passed away, comfortably, on October 1st, 2025 – in “hospice” at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, MD. She had been bedridden for two years, following a fall in Australia!

Nancy was the first person in her family to go to college! She WENT to the University of Miami –> General Motors gave her a scholarship that paid all her fees!

She graduated second in her class, having gotten a B in typing, but her grades were good enough that she was admitted to Johns Hopkins University where the “selection rate” is less than 1 in 100.

After graduating, Nancy worked for Human Sciences Research, where she published original research that demonstrated that most medical errors flow from “human error” –> poor record keeping. Her report generated an employment offer with the National Bureau of Standards. And her experiences there, with data, lead to a position at the US Civil Service Commission. She came to the attention of Governor Dick Celeste who recommended her to a Management Job at the Peace Corps! When President Regan decided to “shut” the Peace Corps, he asked Nancy to provide “retirement letters” for every senior person – including herself. He accepted ALL the resignations – except Nancy’s – which he held for six months, and then suddenly accepted.

The Peace Corps had “retreat rights”, so the law allowed Nancy to return to the agency she came from and keep her salary, if not her “position”. She was given a ‘’Clerk typist” job at the regional office in Washington.

Nancy was finally brought back to the Civil Service Commission main office and asked to head a “task force” to implement the new “Americans with Disabilities Act.” Careful as she has always been, she was in the room where all of the CSC regional managers were to meet to work on the implementation rules for the “Americans with Disabilities Act.”

When the first manager arrived from Denver he asked “Is there any way to get a cup of coffee?” Nancy asked how he wanted it and got it for him. When the Manager from St. Louis came in, “Denver” said: “I’ll ask the girl to get you some coffee.” Nancy did – and then went to the head of the table and announced:

I’m Dr. Kingsbury, I called you all here today because, WE need to figure out how to implement the new Americans with Disabilities Act so that it will be fair and unbiased.

…..

Nancy’s leadership style and dedication to results, brought her to the attention of Elmer Staats, Head of the US GAO (for whom I had ghost written a speech called “no room at the top”) and he offered Dr. Kingsbury an executive position at GAO as the first women ever hired from outside into an executive position. At first she supervised their Public Employment oversight; then she was asked to head the “Air Force Group” where she flew a C-5 simulator and brought consternation to Capitol Hill when she reported that some Congressmen were behaving like snakes re the Lockeed program. Since it was not widely accepted then (at least not by GAO and certainly not by Congress itself) that “snake” is a fairly high form of life, GAO “pulled” Nancy from the AirForce group and gave her a “catchall” duty to manage ARM {Applied Research and Methods), where all the technical specialties: statistician, economist, survey design, graphic artists, technical writers, which had theretofore been distributed across other programs were collected in ONE unit.

Nancy supervised several hundred technical people; she testified to Congress on the “Travel Gate” scandal, and she earned TWO GAO Comptroller General Outstanding Achievement Awards, as well as the ASPA “Elmer B. States Lifetime Achievement award”!

Please keep the family in your thoughts and prayers.