US President-elect Joe Biden has named a Nigerian-American, Adewale Adeyemo, as Deputy Treasury Secretary.
He will serve under former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, who Biden appointed to lead the US Treasury Department.
The 39-year-old attorney and development expert was born in Nigeria in the early 80s.
He obtained his first degree from the University of California, Berkeley before his Juris Doctor from Yale Law School.
Adewale Adeyemo is the first President of the Obama Foundation.
Under the Obama administration, he served as Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economics from 2015 to 2016 and Deputy Director of the National Economic Council.
Before then, he was as an Editor at the Hamilton Project.
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He later worked as the chief negotiator for the Trans-Pacific Partnership and also served as the first chief of staff of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under Elizabeth Warren.
He served as the Director of African American Outreach for the John Kerry 2004 presidential campaign and was based in the San Francisco office.
Biden also appointed Cecilia Rouse, an African-American economist at Princeton University, to lead the Council of Economic Advisers.
In the same vein, he named Neera Tanden, the chief executive of the left-leaning Center for American Progress, as director of the influential Office of Management and Budget.
Kyle Griffin, Senior Producer for MSNBC‘s The Last Word tweeted on Monday afternoon:
It’s official: Biden announces economic team: Janet Yellen, Treasury Secretary; Neera Tanden, OMB Director; Wally Adeyemo, Deputy Treasury Secretary; Cecilia Rouse, Council of Economic Advisers Chair; and Jared Bernstein and Heather Boushey, Council of Economic Advisers members.
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) November 30, 2020