On Wednesday, the ""U.S. Treasury Department"":http://www.treasury.gov announced its newest appointments for the leadership team of the Office of the General Counsel within the ""Consumer Financial Protection Bureau"":http://www.treasury.gov/initiatives/Pages/cfpb.aspx (CFPB) implementation team.
[IMAGE]Currently housed at Treasury, the CFPB will have statutory oversight of mortgage lending and the power to set new rules for home loans and other consumer-facing credit products.
Len Kennedy will serve as general counsel, and Meredith Fuchs will serve as principal deputy general counsel. Roberto Gonzalez and Michael Gordon will serve as deputy general counsels.
Elizabeth Warren, assistant to the president and special advisor to the secretary of the Treasury for the CFPB, made the announcement.
""Len Kennedy brings exactly the right combination of broad experience and vision to ensure that the CFPB will be able to get to work right away on behalf of American families,"" Warren said. ""The team we're building to lead the Office of General Counsel understands the economic pressures facing consumers across the country and is dedicated to leveling the playing field between lenders and families and bringing commonsense solutions to complex problems.""
[COLUMN_BREAK]Kennedy most recently served as general counsel, corporate secretary, and chief government affairs officer for Sprint Nextel Corporation. In 2008, he was a recipient of Corporate Board Member's America's Top General Counsel Award. He was also a partner at Dow Lohnes, senior legal advisor at the Federal Communications Commission, and board member of many Washington-area non-profit organizations, including Appleseed Foundation. He is a graduate of the Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences and Law School.
Fuchs comes to the CFPB team from the U.S. House of Representatives, where she served as chief investigative counsel of the Committee on Energy and Commerce. Previously, she served as VP and general counsel of the National Security Archive at George Washington University. She is a former litigation partner at Wiley Rein LLP and served as an officer on the D.C. Bar Board of Governors. A recipient of the American Library Association's James Madison Award, Fuchs also served as a law clerk. She is a graduate of the New York University School of Law and the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Gonzalez previously served as associate counsel to the president and special assistant to the president at the Office of White House Counsel. He is a former senior litigation associate and member of the Appellate and Supreme Court Litigation Group at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LLP. He also served as a law clerk. He is a graduate of Stanford Law School and Duke University.
Gordon is a former counselor to the general counsel at the Treasury. Prior to joining the Treasury Department, he held senior staff roles in committees of the U.S. House of Representatives, including chief investigative counsel of the Committee on Energy and Commerce and senior investigative counsel of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Gordon was also a litigation counsel at the firm of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr LLP. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School and Harvard College.