Maria Echaveste

Maria Echaveste
Echaveste (right) with President Clinton
White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy
In office June 29, 1998 – January 20, 2001
President	Bill Clinton
Preceded by	Sylvia Burwell
Succeeded by	Joshua Bolten
Director of the Office of Public Liaison
In office February 7, 1997 – June 29, 1998
President	Bill Clinton
Preceded by	Alexis Herman
Succeeded by	Minyon Moore
Personal details
Born	(1954-05-31) May 31, 1954 Texas, U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	Christopher Edley
Education	Stanford University (BA) University of California, Berkeley (JD)

Maria Echaveste (born May 31, 1954) is a former U.S. presidential advisor to Bill Clinton and White House Deputy Chief of Staff during the second Clinton administration. She is one of the highest-ranking Latinas to have served in a presidential administration. She is currently a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and a co-founder of the Nueva Vista Group, a policy, legislative strategy and advocacy group working with non-profit and corporate clients.

Early life

Echaveste was born in Texas as one of seven children born to Mexican immigrants. Her family later moved to California, where she received a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology from Stanford University in 1976 and a Juris Doctor from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (Boalt Hall) in 1980. Following her graduation from Boalt, Echaveste specialized in corporate litigation at the former Los Angeles firm Wyman Bautzer and at Rosenman & Colin in New York.

Public service

From 1993 to 1997, Echaveste served as the administrator of the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor. In that role, she was responsible for the management and policy direction of programs related to a variety of Federal laws, including the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and federal contracting laws. Under her leadership, the Wage and Hour Division initiated an anti-sweatshop initiative, which received an Innovation in American Government Award from the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government in 1996.

From February 1997 to May 1998, Echaveste served as the Director of Public Liaison at the White House, where she developed communications, legislative and public outreach strategies. From 1998 to 2001, she served as Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton. Echaveste managed President Clinton’s domestic policy initiatives on education, civil rights, immigration and bankruptcy reform. She also coordinated relief efforts within the White House for foreign and domestic disasters, and specialized in international issues related to Latin America including the Caribbean Basin Initiative, the Africa Growth Opportunity Act, and Plan Colombia, a federal effort to assist Colombia in its anti-drug campaign. At the end of the Clinton administration, Echaveste was responsible for managing the White House preparations for the millennium celebrations and the 2000 presidential transition.

Current activities

After leaving the White House, Echaveste co-founded the Nueva Vista Group, a strategic and policy consulting group that works with nonprofit organizations, associations and corporations on such issues as immigration, health care, telecommunications, labor and finances. She is a part-time lecturer at Boalt Hall at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. She currently resides in both California and Washington D.C. and works as a consultant. Her clients include AOL Time Warner and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Echaveste is a commentator on the PBS television show "To the Contrary." During the 2004 Democratic primaries, she advised Howard Dean and frequently spoke for him on talk shows. She is a member of the Executive Committee of the Democratic National Committee, a member of the Board of Directors of People for the American Way, the Children's Law Center of Washington, D.C., CARE, a humanitarian organization fighting global poverty and the Level Playing Field Institute, an organization devoted to promoting fairness in education and the workplace. She is married to Chris Edley, whom she met while working together in the Clinton Administration.

In September 2014, President Barack Obama nominated Echaveste to become the United States Ambassador to Mexico. She would have become the first woman to hold the position but she withdrew her name from consideration on January 31, 2015.

External links

• Faculty Biography
• Center for American Progress
• Backbone Campaign
• https://web.archive.org/web/20060112005017/http://www.nationwidespeakers.com/speaker/670/48
• Nueva Vista Group
• To the Contrary