President Joe Biden is gearing up to select Mandy Cohen, a healthcare executive and former health secretary of North Carolina, to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, The Washington Post reported on Thursday, citing three people familiar with the matter. The insiders said that Cohen was congratulated this week on her selection by Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra. The newspaper reported that the president’s formal announcement is expected to take place later this month after Cohen’s paperwork is finalized. Currently the chief executive officer of a private-sector health consultant company, Cohen was recruited to work in the Obama administration in 2013, serving at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. She became North Carolina’s health secretary in 2017, and ushered the state through the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic before departing the office in 2021. Cohen will replace Rochelle Walensky, who announced she’d be ending her tenure at the CDC after two years with “mixed feelings,” she said in a resignation letter last month.