The message behind Biden's new appointments 1:20
(CNN) -
President-elect Joe Biden's administration is taking shape after his transition team unveiled a series of cabinet appointments and major White House personnel movements on Monday.
As President Donald Trump's attempt to reverse the election fails, Biden and his team are moving forward and beginning to give Americans a closer idea of how he plans to govern.
Here's what we know after Biden's first wave of appointments and hires.
Biden proposes experience instead of big names
No Democratic governor is making flight plans for Washington and Democratic senators seem, whether they and their allies like it or not, to be locked in their current positions for now.
As the first round of appointments rolls in, it is clear that Biden is choosing people who are indisputably experts in their fields rather than big names in Democratic politics.
Part of that is a practical matter.
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The Democrats did not vote well on Election Day and there is little appetite within the party to risk their grip on power, even in blue states or districts, in any powerful office.
The special elections that followed the departure of some Republican lawmakers for the Trump administration turned into costly proxy political wars that inflamed partisan passions - something that Biden, in trying to restore some kind of normalcy, is keen to avoid.
Very little on-the-job training will be needed for top officials in the Biden White House.
The same goes for his appointees to run huge bureaucracies like the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security.
Biden's nominees to head the State Department, Antony Blinken, and the Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, are not household names, but both have extensive experience in the agencies they will be tasked with leading.
Diversity is a priority
The first woman to oversee the Treasury Department.
The first Latino and immigrant to head the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The first woman to lead the intelligence community.
Announcements and reports of these imminent landmark nominations came within the space of a few hours Monday, when Biden announced that Cuban-born Mayorkas would head DHS and Avril Haines was Biden's choice to be the next director of national intelligence. .
Janet Yellen is ready to break the mold for the second time.
The first woman to chair the Federal Reserve, if confirmed, will have the same distinction as Secretary of the Treasury.
During the campaign, Biden promised that his administration would "look like America."
That process has begun and is evident in the makeup of your transition team.
Almost half are made up of people of color and there are more women than men in their ranks, according to data provided to CNN.
LEE
: Joe Biden chooses the first woman to lead the intelligence community and the first Latino to lead National Security
The national teams are a fundamental rejection of Trumpism
Bringing in former Secretary of State John Kerry as his special presidential envoy on the environment - and giving that position a seat on the National Security Council - is a marked departure from a Trump who denies climate change and who called global warming as a hoax and pulled the United States out of the Paris climate agreement.
Simply hiring qualified people for your jobs is in itself a rejection of the Trump model, which installed donors, right-wing ideologues and inexperienced allies in positions of power.
This, in some cases, with the express purpose of undermining the institutions they were to lead.
While Trump once sought to appoint Heather Nauert, a former Fox News anchor who spent a couple of years as a State Department spokesperson to be his ambassador to the United Nations, Biden on Monday chose Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a respected veteran diplomat. Most recently she served as undersecretary of the Office of African Affairs.
Biden is trying to stay in the center ... of the Democratic Party
Biden joked about announcing his selection to head the Treasury Department last week with an unusually conscientious promise.
"He is someone who will be accepted by all elements of the Democratic Party," he said, "from progressive to moderate coalitions."
The president-elect, from the end of the primaries to the general election campaign, has tried to end the ideological divide in the Democratic Party by publicly and privately offering progressives a seat at the table.
Biden has continued down that path during the transition.
Still, he has forged important roles for his trusted group of moderate helpers and lifelong advisers.
That loyal inner circle will be front and center in the Oval Office.
Some of his selections have been more popular with the left than others, but so far he has stayed away from the more divisive names.
Jake Sullivan, appointed Monday to be his national security adviser, is not a leftist.
But her work over the past four years to engage progressive ideas, along with her involvement in an introspection project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has won over some potential skeptics.
LEE
: Who could occupy the main positions in the Biden administration?
It's moving fast
In a kind of continuation of the campaign, Biden's team is robbing Trump of oxygen by sticking to their own script and making their own headlines.
For now, that means constantly rolling out selections for top management positions.
Less than two weeks have passed since Ron Klain was appointed White House chief of staff.
Since then, much of the West Wing's top staff has been announced, and with Monday's flurry, Biden's foreign policy and national security positions are filling up.
The speed of the process, which began before the election, has sent a clear message to Americans and those watching from abroad: a new government is coming and ready from day one.
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