First in The Vault: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has assembled her team of senior staff to lead the Democratic side of the Senate Banking Committee, according to a person familiar with the process.
Gabrielle Elul, Warren’s current legislative director and a former chief economist at the House Budget Committee, will serve as policy director. Eric Nguyen will be chief counsel after departing as deputy general counsel at the Treasury Department.
Saloni Sharma, currently a top adviser to White House chief of staff Jeff Zients, will serve as communications director. And Gracie Bouwer will be director of external affairs after departing a senior role at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The group will be led by Jon Donenberg as staff director, as we reported Wednesday night. But as a whole, the hires represent a wide swath of Massachusetts Democrat’s alumni network in the nation’s capital, with representation from Congress, the CFPB, Treasury and the Biden-era White House.
Warren’s role as the top Democrat on Senate Banking has been the subject of quiet fascination for the financial services industry since the 2024 election. The former professor’s policy chops, media savvy and personnel network helped make her a singular progressive force in the Biden administration.
Washington today looks very different from when Warren was first elected to the Senate in 2012. But as left-leaning political parties face setbacks around the Western world, we could argue that Warren’s perch on Banking makes her one of the most influential progressives still serving in elected office with a focus on financial policy. She intends to use that influence in the 119th Congress.
A couple more factoids about Warren’s staff hires:
– Nguyen previously worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in the nation’s capital. And as a law student at Harvard, he wrote about the lack of federal mortgage protections for families in times of financial crisis.
– Bouwer previously served as deputy assistant director of policy planning and strategy at the CFPB, where she played a key role in developing the Biden administration’s approach to “junk fees.”
