May 2022

FAMILY UPDATE: My wife, Kate, and I are marking 20 years in Kensington, Maryland, just north of the Washington DC line. COVID saw our two daughters (ages 20 and 23) living with us. Both are well and thriving. Kate continues as a public elementary school teacher, now focused on English as a second language.

CAREER UPDATE: I had the privilege of being one of the first employees of a new federal agency that opened its doors in 2011 called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, founded by Elizabeth Warren. I’m a civil rights lawyer by training, and I helped to start the CFPB’s office of fair lending. During our early years, we brought landmark redlining and other cases. Our work was significantly curtained during the prior administration and now has accelerated again.

Prior to the CFPB, I worked at the Department of Justice doing voting rights cases and, later, at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, doing housing discrimination cases. I actually went to law school about 12 years out of college and, in that gap, did service work including with homeless people in New York City and Guatemalan refugees in southern Mexico. It’s been a very interesting ride, to be sure!

FAVORITE BINGE: “Mad Men.” I decided to watch it, in large measure, because my father was a “Mad Man” himself, a Madison Avenue advertising executive in New York City during the same period (early 1960s) as fictionalized in the show. Watching the show, I can channel what it must have been like for my dad’s days in that period. Also, the acting is great!

CRAZIEST THING GOING ON: The day after the reunion this year, I’m heading to central Massachusetts for a weeklong silent meditation retreat. Over the years, mindfulness meditation has played a major role in my spiritual life, and I’ve relied, more and more, on periods of silence to maintain a sense of well-being and groundedness among all the challenges of life.