President-elect Donald Trump announced Thursday that he would appoint Doug Collins to lead the Veterans Affairs Department in his new administration.
Here are five things to know about the former Republican congressman from Georgia who would lead the agency tasked with providing health care to former members of the U.S. armed forces
Collins is a Baptist minister who has served in the Navy and Air Force Reserve
Collins, 58, holds a master's degree in divinity from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and pastored a church for 11 years. He served as a U.S. Navy chaplain for two years in the late 1980s. After the Sept. 11 attacks, he joined the U.S. Air Force Reserve as a chaplain. Collins deployed to Balad Air Force Base in Iraq for five months in 2008. He remains a colonel in the Air Force Reserve. Collins became a lawyer well into adulthood.
Collins' political career was shaped representing one of Georgia's most conservative regions
