Former Biden Administration Officials and Economic Experts Join Economic Speakers Bureau
Tim Wu, Elizabeth Wilkins, Graham Steele, Kathryn Anne Edwards, Zach Butterworth, and Shayna Strom are available for commentary on economic and policy-focused news of today
WASHINGTON — Today, the Economic Speakers Bureau, a diverse national network of economic policy experts, announced a new slate of economic policy experts and former Biden administration officials who are available to speak on a wide range of issues and add underrepresented voices and new perspectives to economic coverage. The new speakers bring their expertise to a wide range of issues including antitrust, implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS and Science Act, and the state of the economy.
Since the bureau launched in June of last year, its experts have frequently been featured on national television and radio and quoted across print and digital media. As former senior administration officials, think tank scholars, leading researchers, and renowned academic voices, these experts seek to inform coverage of the U.S. economy and how policy decisions impact working-class Americans. Bureau experts are available for on-air and print interviews, panel discussions, and speaking engagements.
The new experts join the ranks of Bharat Ramamurti, Rakeen Mabud, Ganesh Sitaraman, Jennifer Harris, K. Sabeel Rahman, Michele Evermore, Kitty Richards, Sharon Block, Michael Linden, Kate Gordon, Bobby Kogan, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, Bilal Baydoun, Jessica Fulton, Shilpa Phadke, and Skanda Amarnath. More information on the new members can be found below. Please visit www.econspeakers.org to learn more and email [email protected] to schedule an interview.
Tim Wu
Professor, Columbia Law School
Tim Wu is an author, policy advocate, and professor at Columbia Law School. Wu’s best known work is the development of Net Neutrality theory, but he also writes about private power, free speech, copyright, and antitrust. His books The Master Switch and The Attention Merchants have won wide recognition and awards.
Wu has worked in academia, federal and state governments. He worked at the White House for the National Economic Council; at the Federal Trade Commission, for the New York Attorney General’ as a fellow at Google, and for Riverstone Networks in the telecommunications industry. He was a law clerk for Judge Richard Posner and Justice Stephen Breyer. He graduated from McGill University (B.Sc.), and Harvard Law School.
Wu is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, and was formerly a contributing writer at NewYorker.com and contributing editor at the New Republic. He has been named to the Politico 50 twice, to America’s 100 most influential lawyers, and also won awards from Scientific American magazine, National Law Journal, 02138 Magazine. He has twice won the Lowell Thomas Award for travel writing and in 2017 he was named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Elizabeth Wilkins
Former Chief of Staff to the Chair, Federal Trade Commission
Elizabeth Wilkins was the Chief of Staff to the Chair and Director of the Office of Policy and Planning. Before joining the FTC, Wilkins served as Senior Advisor to the White House Chief of Staff. Prior to that, she worked in several senior leadership roles at the Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia, including Senior Counsel for Policy and Chief of Staff. Wilkins also previously served as a law clerk to Associate Justice Elena Kagan of the U.S. Supreme Court, and to then-Chief Judge Merrick Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Before law school, Wilkins was a policy advisor in the White House Domestic Policy Council. She graduated magna cum laude from Yale University and holds a J.D. from Yale Law School.
Graham Steele
Former Assistant Secretary, U.S. Treasury
Graham Steele most recently served as the Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. He is an expert on financial regulation and financial institutions, with more than a decade of experience working at the highest levels of law and policy in Washington, D.C.
Graham was previously the director of the Corporations and Society Initiative at Stanford Graduate School of Business, a research initiative that examines issues at the intersection of markets, business, and government to promote more accountable capitalism and governance.
Prior to joining Stanford GSB, Graham was a member of the staff of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. From 2015 to 2017, Graham was the Minority Chief Counsel for the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs. From 2010 to 2015 he was a Legislative Assistant for United States Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), handling the Senator’s work as a member of the Senate Banking Committee. During that time, he also spent four years as the staff director of the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions & Consumer Protection. Prior to joining Senator Brown’s staff, Graham was a policy counsel at Public Citizen’s Congress Watch in Washington, D.C.
Graham received his bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Rochester and his law degree from The George Washington University Law School. He is originally from Brookline, Massachusetts, and is a member of the Massachusetts State Bar.
Kathryn Anne Edwards
Economist
Kathryn Anne Edwards is a PhD Economist and freelance economic policy consultant. Her research focuses on the intersection of labor markets and public policy, including unemployment and unemployment insurance (UI); women’s labor supply after children; the challenge facing women in retirement; poverty alleviation; and Social Security. She previously served as adjunct economist at RAND and a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Edwards completed her Ph.D. in economics at the University of Wisconsin. While a student, she was a trainee at the Center for Demography and Human Ecology, a graduate fellow of the Institute for Research on Poverty, and a summer fellow at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago through the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession.
Zach Butterworth
Former Director of Private Sector Engagement, White House
Zach Butterworth is an attorney who advises public and private sector leaders on law, public policy, and strategy. He has spent his career building bipartisan coalitions to change laws and fix intractable problems, whether in city hall, on Capitol Hill, or in the White House.
He most recently served as the Director of Private Sector Engagement in the White House Office of Public Engagement where he was the point person in the Biden-Harris Administration for the business community, working closely with senior administration officials, CEOs, D.C. office heads, and trade associations. In the White House, Zach was a member of the Supply Chains Disruption Task Force that responded to numerous economic crises. He was also on the team negotiating and implementing the American Rescue Plan, CHIPS and Science Act, Inflation Reduction Act, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Other positions in government include Executive Counsel to Mayor Mitch Landrieu and Director of Intergovernmental Affairs for the City of New Orleans, Legislative Director and Counsel to U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu, and Senior Counsel to Congressman Cedric Richmond.
Zach received his undergraduate degree at Louisiana State University and a Law Degree from Loyola University New Orleans College of Law. A passionate outdoorsman and former USCG OUPV licensed captain, Zach enjoys spending time outside with his wife and children.
Shayna Strom
President and CEO, Washington Center for Equitable Growth
Shayna Strom is the president and CEO of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. She has decades of experience bridging nonprofits, government, philanthropy, and academia, and a deep commitment to fostering economic growth by addressing inequality.
Previously, Strom served as the chief deputy national political director at the American Civil Liberties Union, where she helped launch a 75-person department focused on policy, issue campaigns, and grassroots organizing. Strom also has had a significant government career, including serving on the Biden-Harris transition team. During the Obama administration, she spent 4 years in the White House, working as an adviser to the head of the Office of Management and Budget and as the chief of staff and senior counselor at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, or OIRA, where she negotiated the policy and politics of many of President Barack Obama’s high-profile regulations. She also previously served as counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee for Sen. Al Franken (D-MN), where she worked on antitrust issues, among other topics.
Additionally, Strom has taught at Johns Hopkins University, Sarah Lawrence College, and the Biden Institute at the University of Delaware. She was a 2021–2022 SNF Agora visiting fellow at Johns Hopkins University and a fellow at the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School. She has written and testified about labor policy and the changing workplace economy.
Strom has worked with several prominent foundations and directed the early U.S. policy work at the Open Philanthropy Project. She also served on the initial leadership team setting up Indivisible as a national nonprofit.
Strom graduated summa cum laude from Yale College, and received a law degree from Yale Law School and an M.Sc. from Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar.
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About the Economic Speakers Bureau
The Economic Speakers Bureau, an initiative of the Groundwork Collaborative, includes a diverse group of experts available for comment on a variety of topics. Bureau members include former Biden Administration officials, labor law and policy experts, economists, and professors of law and public policy. They will be available to speak to a wide range of issues and add underrepresented voices and new perspectives to economic coverage. While these bureau members are diverse in experience and policy areas, they are all grounded in the shared understanding that the strength of the economy should be judged by the economic well-being and trajectory of workers and families. The Economic Speakers Bureau will add nuance and underrepresented voices to the economic conversation, painting a fuller picture of the economy and what can be done to support working people.