[7] After receiving his master's degree, he began his career as Presidential Management Intern[8] and later was a budget analyst for the Department of Defense.

Dubbed by some "the Grim Reaper," he led efforts to cut defense programs the Pentagon's senior leadership saw as unnecessary or wasteful.

[11] After Bush left office, O'Keefe was Professor of Business Administration, Assistant to the Senior Vice President for Research and Dean of the Graduate School at Pennsylvania State University.

He next became the Louis A. Bantle Professor of Business and Government Policy, an endowed chair at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

[7] From January to December 2001, O'Keefe served as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget in the George W. Bush administration, a job that strengthened his reputation as a "bean counter".

[7] O'Keefe's tenure at NASA can be divided into roughly three equal periods, each marked by a single problem or event of overriding importance.

[13] In the period December 2001 through January 2003, O'Keefe eliminated a $5 billion cost overrun in the construction of the International Space Station.

From January 2004 through February 2005, O'Keefe re-organized NASA to start working on President George W. Bush's newly announced Vision for Space Exploration to send humans to the Moon and Mars.

While members of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) supported this decision numerous astronomers felt that the Hubble telescope was valuable enough to merit the risk.

[citation needed] O'Keefe led LSU during its response to Hurricane Katrina in August and September 2005 when the campus was transformed into what has been called "the largest acute-care field hospital established in a contingency in the nation's history.

[22] O'Keefe lightly discussed his membership in the exclusive San Francisco Bohemian Club that has a 15- to 20-year waiting list, with the Louisiana State University student newspaper The Daily Reveille.

His Washington connections were noted at a time when EADS was trying to secure a $35 billion U.S. Air Force contract for tanker aircraft in a competition with Boeing.

[3] O'Keefe brought aboard Paul Pastorek, the Louisiana state school superintendent from 2007 to 2011, as the EADS chief counsel and corporate secretary.

[24][25][26][27][28] In January 2011, O'Keefe assumed the additional responsibilities of chairman of the board of EADS, which was renamed Airbus Group's North American Unit.