Biden to name Black woman, Cecilia Rouse, as chair of CEA: report

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President-elect Joe Biden continues to name cabinet positions as he prepares to enter the White House in January.

The Biden transition team confirmed with TheGrio that he has handpicked Cecilia Rouse as the chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers. Rouse, a Black woman, is a renowned economist and dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, the second-longest-serving dean in its history.

If confirmed, she would be the first woman of color to serve as council chair.

A Harvard graduate with a Ph.D. in economics, Rouse was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers during the first two years of former President Barack Obama’s term. During that time, she was influential in helping to pull the country out of the Great Recession, America’s biggest economic meltdown since the Great Depression.

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“I worked to help develop a set of policies in a number of areas, including finding ways to make it more attractive for employers to hire workers and finding ways for workers to invest in themselves to make them more productive,” she told a Princeton newsletter.

She joined Princeton’s faculty in 1992 after earning her doctorate in economics from Harvard University. She told the school her service in the federal government “gave her an appreciation of the importance of translating research for policymakers and wider audiences.”

In 1998, she also served a year working at the National Economic Council as a special assistant to President Bill Clinton.

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One of her passion projects is studying post-secondary institutions and increasing the focus on college completion.

Rouse is married to Ford Morrison, the son of author Toni Morrison.

Neera Tanden, an Indian American woman who has led the Center for American Progress for 10 years, is expected to be nominated to head the Office of Management and Budget, but she faces an uphill confirmation challenge given her history of standing against many Republican policies. She would need 51 Senate votes to be confirmed.

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Tanden and Rouse will join Janet Yellen, who has been nominated as the secretary of the Treasury, as picks for the Biden economic team that give it the diversity he promised during his presidential campaign. Biden has already named an all-woman White House communications squad.

Adewale “Wally” Adeyemo, the first president of The Obama Foundation and first chief of staff at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is expected to be named deputy Treasury secretary.

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