A Fighting Chance

While COP panel members pressed government officials and bankers in public, a nonpartisan group of talented and dedicated professionals were working hard behind the scenes. As executive director, Naomi Baum led the group with amazing skill, always driving the process forward in an honest, evenhanded manner that made each report stronger and that helped us build public confidence in our efforts. As we added more capacity, the COP staff helped us conduct vigorous oversight in the midst of the economic crisis. They dug deep to get the information we needed, crunched numbers to follow the money, and put together hearings across the country to shed light on how Treasury’s actions were helping (or not helping) the American people. In addition to the senior staff I mentioned in the book—deputy director Tewana Wilkerson, lead attorneys Steve Kroll and Sara Hanks, and ethics counsel Wilson Abney—there were almost eighty COP staffers, detailees, and interns, many of whom stepped away from careers, came out of retirement, or deferred other job opportunities to help us. Key people included senior policy advisor Alan Rhinesmith; attorneys Elizabeth MacDonald, Thaya Brook Knight, and Beth Davidson; communications directors Peter Jackson and Thomas Seay; hearing lead Patrick McGreevy; research analyst Isaac Boltansky; chief clerk Joan Evans; Nicole Callan, who kept us all organized; Michael Negron, who played a critical role in getting the panel set up; and Caleb Weaver, Ganesh Sitaraman, and Dan Geldon, who also helped get us off the ground. I deeply appreciate their hard—and careful—work.

The effort to get the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau passed into law was yet another David vs. Goliath fight. I mentioned in the book some of the key people who helped us beat the odds and win, including Michael Barr and Eric Stein at the Treasury Department, Heather Booth and Lisa Donner at Americans for Financial Reform, Dan Geldon—then working at the Roosevelt Institute—Travis Plunkett at Consumer Federation of America, Ed Mierzwinski at US PIRG, Congressman Barney Frank, and Senator Chris Dodd. But they formed just the tip of the iceberg. Andrew Rich and Mike Lux were particularly helpful in supporting this work and putting wind in our sails. And so many people in consumer groups, labor unions, netroots organizations, and civil rights groups worked tirelessly for more than a year on this fight. Nearly every week, we were on conference calls setting our strategy and making plans, and I got to see firsthand how effective nonprofits (even ones with very few resources) can be when they are standing up for working families. In addition, many bloggers took on the cause, and so many foundations, think tanks, and individual people made financial reform their fight in ways that provided enormous value. They strengthened the hand of the those in the administration and on Capitol Hill who wanted a strong agency and who spent countless hours working to get the details right. I have no doubt that the agency never would have happened without the dedication of many, many people.

I have already mentioned some of the individuals who helped build the CFPB, but I also need to say a special thank-you to all the bureau’s staff. People from all walks of life heard the call of public service and came to help build the consumer agency. Building an airplane while you fly it is not an easy task, and we could not have accomplished anything without the hard work of exemplary public servants. I am particularly grateful to the CFPB executive committee for their help in making our vision of a strong consumer agency a reality: Wally Adeyemo, Sartaj Alag, Steve Antonakes, Rich Cordray, Raj Date, Patrice Ficklin, Dan Geldon, Gail Hillebrand, Len Kennedy, Peggy Twohig, Elizabeth Vale, and Catherine West. Their work was tremendous, bold, and visionary, but always executed with the care demanded in a very challenging environment. Other members of the staff made outsized contributions to our early efforts as well, including Anna Canfield, Flavio Cumpiano, Leandra English, Jen Howard, Peter Jackson, Alyssa Martin, Zixta Martinez, Pat McCoy, Holly Petraeus, Will Sealy, and David Silberman. Each of them—along with so many dozens of others on the CFPB staff—will always have my appreciation for their hard work and determination. I am also grateful to the consumer advocates and those within Congress, the White House, the Treasury Department, and elsewhere in the Obama administration who helped protect us from attempts to defund, destroy, and defang the agency. While we did our best to prove that the best defense is a good offense—for example, by taking consumer complaints before we let the paint dry—it made a huge difference to have an all-star cast of defenders.

In the early days of the bankruptcy wars, a number of labor unions that were already fighting on multiple fronts took up the cause of families in financial trouble. Later, in the fight for the consumer agency, organized labor was again at the forefront of change on behalf of working Americans. The AFL-CIO hosted that first meeting pulling together all the groups, and they, along with SEIU and so many other unions, made a huge difference. Over the years I’ve had the privilege to work shoulder to shoulder with amazing union leaders in Massachusetts and across the country. But as good union leaders, I know they would want the thanks to go not to them, but to the men and women who work so tirelessly in hospitals, classrooms, fire stations, constructions sites, and on factory floors every day.