FINANCIAL LITERACY AND EDUCATION COMMISSION

June 29, 2016

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES

Jacob J. Lew

U.S. Secretary of the Treasury

Jack Lew was confirmed by the United States Senate on February 27, 2013, to serve as the 76th 

Secretary of the Treasury. Secretary Lew previously served as White House Chief of Staff. Prior 

to that role, Lew was the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), a position 

he also held in President Clinton's Cabinet from 1998 to 2001. Before returning to OMB in 2010,

Lew first joined the Obama Administration as Deputy Secretary of State for Management and 

Resources.

Before joining the State Department, Lew served as managing director and chief operating 

officer for two different Citigroup business units. Prior to that, he was executive vice president 

and chief operating officer of New York University, where he was responsible for budget, 

finance, and operations, and served as a professor of public administration. From 2004 

through 2008, Lew served on the Board of Directors of the Corporation for National and 

Community Service and chaired its Management, Administration, and Governance Committee.

As OMB Director from 1998 to 2001, Lew led the Administration budget team and served as a 

member of the National Security Council. During his tenure at OMB, the U.S. budget operated 

at a surplus for three consecutive years. Earlier, Lew served as OMB's Deputy Director and was 

a member of the negotiating team that reached a bipartisan agreement to balance the budget. As 

Special Assistant to President Clinton from 1993 to 1994, Mr. Lew helped design Americorps, 

the national service program.

Lew began his career in Washington in 1973 as a legislative aide. From 1979 to 1987, he was a 

principal domestic policy advisor to House Speaker Thomas P. O'Neill, Jr, where he served the 

House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee as Assistant Director and then Executive 

Director. He was the Speaker's liaison to the Greenspan Commission, which negotiated a 

bipartisan solution to extend the solvency of Social Security in 1983, and he was responsible for 

domestic and economic issues, including Medicare, budget, tax, trade, appropriations, and 

energy issues.

Before joining the Obama Administration, Lew co-chaired the Advisory Board for City Year 

New York and was on the boards of the Kaiser Family Foundation, the Center on Budget and 

Policy Priorities, the Brookings Institution Hamilton Project, and the Tobin Project. He is a 

member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the National Academy of Social Insurance, and of 

the bar in Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.
Thomas Perez

U.S. Secretary of Labor

Thomas E. Perez was nominated by President Obama to serve as the nation's 26th Secretary of 

Labor, and was sworn in on July 23, 2013.

Previously Perez served as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of 

Justice. The Civil Rights Division enforces federal laws that prohibit discrimination and uphold 

the civil and constitutional rights of all who live in America. During his tenure of nearly four 

years, Perez oversaw the effort to restore and expand the division's achievements. Under his 

leadership as Assistant Attorney General, the division successfully implemented the ShepardByrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act; expanded equal housing opportunity by bringing and settling 

the largest fair-lending cases in history; protected schoolchildren from discrimination, bullying 

and harassment; dramatically expanded access to employment, housing, and educational 

opportunities for people with disabilities; protected the right to vote for all eligible voters free 

from discrimination; took record-setting efforts to ensure that communities have effective and 

democratically accountable policing; and safeguarded the employment, housing, fair lending and 

voting rights of service members. He also expanded the division's partnerships across federal 

agencies to address cross-cutting challenges in human trafficking, employment discrimination 

and fair lending, among others.

Perez has spent his entire career in public service. He previously served as the Secretary of 

Maryland's Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation. From 2002 until 2006, he was a 

member of the Montgomery County Council. He was the first Latino ever elected to the Council, 

and served as Council president in 2005. Earlier in his career, he spent 12 years in federal public 

service, most as a career attorney with the Civil Rights Division. As a federal prosecutor for the 

division, he prosecuted and supervised the prosecution of some of the Justice Department's most 

high profile civil rights cases, including a hate crimes case in Texas involving a group of white 

supremacists who went on a deadly, racially-motivated crime spree.

He later served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights under Attorney General 

Janet Reno. Among other responsibilities, he chaired the interagency Worker Exploitation Task 

Force, which oversaw a variety of initiatives designed to protect vulnerable workers. He also 

served as special counsel to the late Senator Edward Kennedy, and was Senator Kennedy's 

principal adviser on civil rights, criminal justice and constitutional issues. For the final two years 

of the Clinton administration, he served as the Director of the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. 

Department of Health and Human Services.
Richard Cordray 

Director, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Vice Chair

Richard Cordray serves as the first Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He 

previously led the Bureau’s Enforcement Division.

Prior to joining the Bureau, Mr. Cordray served on the front lines of consumer protection as 

Ohio’s Attorney General. Mr. Cordray recovered more than $2 billion for Ohio’s retirees, 

investors, and business owners and took major steps to help protect its consumers from 

fraudulent foreclosures and financial predators. In 2010, his office responded to a record number 

of consumer complaints, but Mr. Cordray went further and opened that process for the first time 

to small businesses and non-profit organizations to ensure protections for even more Ohioans. To 

recognize his work on behalf of consumers as Attorney General, the Better Business Bureau 

presented Mr. Cordray with an award for promoting an ethical marketplace.

Mr. Cordray also served as Ohio Treasurer and Franklin County Treasurer, two elected positions 

in which he led state and county banking, investment, debt, and financing activities. As Ohio 

Treasurer, he resurrected a defunct economic development program that provides low-interest 

loan assistance to small businesses to create jobs, re-launched the original concept as 

GrowNOW, and pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into access for credit to small 

businesses. Mr. Cordray simultaneously created a Bankers Advisory Council to share ideas about 

the program with community bankers across Ohio.

Earlier in his career, Mr. Cordray was an adjunct professor at the Ohio State University College 

of Law, served as a State Representative for the 33rd Ohio House District, was the first Solicitor 

General in Ohio’s history, and was a sole practitioner and Of Counsel to Kirkland & Ellis. Mr. 

Cordray has argued seven cases before the United States Supreme Court, including by special 

appointment of both the Clinton and Bush Justice Departments. He is a graduate of Michigan 

State University, Oxford University, and the University of Chicago Law School. Mr. Cordray 

was Editor-in-Chief of the University of Chicago Law Review and later clerked for U.S. 

Supreme Court Justices Byron White and Anthony Kennedy.

Mr. Cordray lives in Grove City, Ohio with his wife Peggy – a Professor at Capital University 

Law School in Columbus – and twin children Danny and Holly.
Amias Gerety

Acting Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions, U.S. Department of the Treasury 

Amias Gerety is an Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury. Previously, Mr. Gerety served as 

Senior Advisor to the Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Financial Stability Oversight Council, 

and later as the Acting Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions where he developed and 

coordinated Treasury’s policies on issues affecting financial institutions and oversaw the 

Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund, the State Small Business Credit 

Initiative, and the Small Business Lending Fund. Prior to joining Treasury, Mr. Gerety was a 

management consultant at Oliver Wyman. He was also part of the domestic policy staff of John 

Kerry’s Presidential campaign and for the Center for American Progress.

Melissa Koide

Deputy Assistant Secretary for Consumer Policy, U.S. Department of the Treasury

Melissa Koide serves as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Consumer Policy. In this role, she is 

responsible for matters concerning financial access, financial education, and consumer policy in 

the United States. She also served as the Executive Director for the President’s Advisory Council 

on Financial Capability for Young Americans and supports the Secretary in his leadership of the 

Financial Literacy and Education Commission. Prior to joining Treasury, Ms. Koide was the 

Vice President of Policy at the Center for Financial Services Innovation.
Phyllis Borzi

Assistant Secretary, Employee Benefits Security Administration, U.S. Department of Labor

Phyllis C. Borzi was confirmed on July 10, 2009 as Assistant Secretary of Labor of the 

Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA). EBSA oversees approximately 681,000 

private-sector retirement plans, approximately 2.3 million health plans, and a similar number of 

other welfare benefit plans that provide benefits to approximately 143 million Americans. As 

agency head, she oversees the administration, regulation and enforcement of Title I of the 

Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA).

Previously, Ms. Borzi was a research professor in the Department of Health Policy at George 

Washington University Medical Center’s School of Public Health and Health Services. In that 

position, she was involved in research and policy analysis involving employee benefit plans, the 

uninsured, managed care, and legal barriers to the development of health information 

technology. In addition, she was of counsel with the Washington, D.C. law firm of O’Donoghue 

& O’Donoghue LLP, specializing in ERISA and other legal issues affecting employee benefit 

plans, including pensions and retirement savings, health plans, and discrimination based on age 

or disability.

From 1979 to 1995, Borzi served as pension and employee benefit counsel for the U.S. House of 

Representatives, Subcommittee on Labor-Management Relations of the Committee on Education 

and Labor. In 1993, she served on working groups dealing with insurance reform, workers’ 

compensation and employer coverage in connection with the Clinton Task Force on Health Care 

Reform.

Borzi is a charter member and former President of the American College of Employee Benefit 

Counsel and served on its Board of Governors from 2000-2008; former member and former cochair of the Advisory Board of the BNA Pension & Benefits Reporter; former member of the 

Advisory Committee of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation; and former member of the 

Advisory Board of the Pension Research Council, The Wharton School, The University of 

Pennsylvania; and former member of the Board of the Women’s Institute for a Secure 

Retirement (WISER). In 2008, she was appointed by the U.S. District Court for the Northern 

District of Ohio and served as a public member of the Administrative Committee for the 

Goodyear retiree health trust.

Borzi has published numerous articles on ERISA, health care law and policy and retirement 

security issues and has been a frequent speaker to legal, professional, business, consumer and 

state and local governmental organizations. An active member of the American Bar Association, 

Borzi is the former chair of the ABA’s Joint Committee on Employee Benefits. She holds a 

Master of Arts degree in English from Syracuse University and a J.D. from Catholic University 

Law School, where she was editor-in-chief of the law review. She is a member of the District of 

Columbia Bar and is admitted to practice before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of 

Columbia Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Marilyn Mohrman-Gillis

Managing Director, Public Policy and Communications, CFP Board

Marilyn Mohrman-Gillis has been Managing Director of Public Policy & Communications since 

July 2008. She develops and oversees CFP Board’s advocacy initiatives to ensure the visibility 

and credibility of the CFP® certification with legislators, regulators and other policy makers. 

She also oversees CFP Board’s Public Awareness Campaign – a multi-million dollar integrated 

advertising and public relations effort to raise awareness of the CFP® certification.

During her 30-year career in the nation’s capital, Ms. Mohrman-Gillis has built a broad portfolio 

of advocacy on behalf of the American public for and with regulators and legislators. As Director 

of Policy and Federal Relations with the National League of Cities (NLC), Ms. Mohrman-Gillis 

directed policy development, federal advocacy, and grassroots mobilization for the nation’s 

leading association representing municipalities across the country. She also directed the NLC’s 

advocacy before Congress and federal agencies on a number of issues, including extensive work 

with tax and finance policies.

As Vice President for Policy and Legal Affairs and General Counsel for the Association of 

Public Television Stations, Ms. Mohrman-Gillis had extensive legal and regulatory policy 

responsibilities, supplemented with a key role in strategic planning for the association, its board 

and member public television stations. As a supervising attorney in the Federal Communications 

Commission’s Mass Media Bureau, she managed staff attorneys who were responsible for the 

development of broadcast and cable rules. She began her career as a litigator in the Washington, 

DC, office of the law firm Steptoe & Johnson. She has a BA in Psychology from St. Mary’s 

College, Notre Dame, an MSW from Catholic University and a JD from the Columbus School of 

Law, Catholic University. She previously served on the Board of Governors for the District of 

Columbia Bar and was Chair of the Board for the Legal Counsel for the Elderly. 

Sarah Newcomb

Behavioral Economist, Morningstar

Dr. Sarah Newcomb is a behavioral economist for Morningstar, Inc. where she works to 

incorporate the findings from behavioral science into financial management applications. An 

interdisciplinary scholar, Ms. Newcomb’s work is focused on the psychological roots of financial 

decision-making, and ways in which individuals and financial advisors can intervene to foster 

better financial behaviors for the long-term. She is the Author of LOADED: Money, Psychology, 

and how to get ahead without leaving your values behind (Wiley, 2016). Her work has been 

featured by Reuters, Bloomberg, Money, the Washington Post, and the Daily Mail.

Jon Stein

Founder and CEO, Betterment

Jon Stein is the CEO and founder of Betterment. Passionate about making life better, and with 

his experience from his career of advising banks and brokers on risk and products, he founded 

Betterment in 2008. Jon is a graduate of Harvard University and Columbia Business School, and 

he holds Series 7, 24, 63, and is a CFA, Chartered Financial Analyst. His interests lie at the 

intersection of behavior, psychology, and economics. What excites him most about his work is 

making everyday activities and products more efficient, accessible, and easy to use.
Karen Lash

Executive Director, Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable 

Karen Lash is a Deputy Director for the Office for Access to Justice at the US Department of 

Justice, and the Executive Director of the White House Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable. In 

2014, she received the John Marshall Award for Outstanding Legal Achievement for 

Participation in Litigation. Before joining the Department, she was a consultant for law schools 

and nonprofits, including the Mississippi Center for Justice, American Constitution Society, 

National Legal Aid and Defender Association, and the law schools at UC Irvine and UC 

Berkeley. She has served as Equal Justice Works VP of Programs, University of Southern 

California Law School Associate Dean, Public Counsel's Child Care Law Project Director, Tuttle 

& Taylor associate, and clerk to US Ninth Circuit court of Appeals Judge Warren J. Ferguson. 

Lash co-chaired the California Access to Justice Commission, and has helped establish legal 

clinics in Moldova, Ukraine, Slovakia, Cambodia, Kyrgyzstan, Serbia and Macedonia. Lash has 

a B.A. from UCLA and a J.D. from USC Law School.

Mary Griffin

Senior Advisor, Office of Financial Empowerment, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Mary Griffin serves as Senior Advisor in the Office of Financial Empowerment of the Consumer 

Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The Office focuses on improving the financial lives of lowincome and economically vulnerable consumers. Prior work includes representing consumer 

interests before Congress, federal and state regulators on consumer finance, insurance, health, 

access to justice, and consumer protection issues as senior counsel with Consumers Union, 

publisher of Consumer Reports, and on behalf of cooperative, member-owned businesses as 

Director of Public Policy with the National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA). Earlier 

in her career, she was an attorney with Maryland Legal Aid and began her legal career in the 

Office of the Solicitor, Division of Mine Safety and Health, at the U.S. Department of Labor. 

She received her law degree from Temple University and her LLM in economic regulation from 

George Washington University.

Monica Vaca

Assistant Director, Bureau of Consumer Protection. Federal Trade Commission

Monica Vaca is an Assistant Director in the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer 

Protection. Ms. Vaca works in the FTC’s Division of Marketing Practices, which brings civil law 

enforcement cases and engages in policy work to combat deceptive and unfair practices. Ms. 

Vaca heads up the Bureau’s Legal Services Collaboration, and for more than a decade, Ms. Vaca 

has litigated or supervised litigation against fraudulent merchants and payment processing 

companies. In 2011, Monica was honored to receive the Wasserstein Fellowship from Harvard 

Law School’s Office of Public Interest Advising. Ms. Vaca began her career by clerking for the 

Honorable John F. Grady in the Northern District of Illinois, and shortly thereafter served as an 

Equal Justice Fellow in the Women’s Law Project of the Legal Assistance Foundation of 

Chicago. She is a graduate of Northwestern University School of Law and the University of 

Virginia.
Michael Froehlich 

Managing Attorney, Community Legal Service of Philadelphia

Michael is the Managing Attorney of Community Legal Service’s Homeownership and 

Consumer Rights Unit and of the Intake Unit at CLS’s North Philadelphia Law Center. In his 

role with the Homeownership and Consumer Rights Unit, he litigates in state and federal court 

on behalf of homeowners and victims of predatory consumer scams. He also advocates on 

behalf of consumers before regulatory and legislative bodies. As the Managing Attorney of the 

Intake Unit, he ensures that clients coming to CLS’s North Philadelphia office are provided with 

holistic legal advice and representation as timely and efficiently as possible. Prior to joining the 

Homeownership and Consumer Rights Unit, Michael was a staff attorney with CLS’s Public 

Benefits Unit, representing clients applying for and receiving food stamps (SNAP), Medicaid, 

cash assistance, and a wide range of other income supports.

Prior to joining CLS, Mr. Froehlich was a staff attorney at Legal Aid of Southeastern

Pennsylvania (link is external), where he represented Delaware County residents on a wide 

variety of welfare matters and other issues. He was also a staff attorney at Bay Area Legal

Aid (link is external) in Oakland, California. Mr. Froehlich began his legal career as a paralegal 

at Philadelphia Legal Assistance (link is external), CLS’s sister organization, in 1997.

Additionally, he most recently served on the research team for the National Student Financial 

Wellness Study administered through The Ohio State University. Mr. Froehlich received his 

J.D. from the Boalt Hall of Law at the University of California at Berkeley. He graduated from 

Haverford College with a B.A. in Political Science.