WASHINGTON—The Treasury Department said Monday it had created a new position to support the Biden administration’s efforts to promote economic opportunities for communities of color as the nation recovers from the coronavirus pandemic.
Janis Bowdler, who most recently worked as president of the JPMorgan Chase & Co. Foundation, will become the department’s first counselor for racial equity, the Treasury said in a statement. Ms. Bowdler will be tasked with coordinating “efforts to advance racial equity including engaging with diverse communities throughout the country and to identify and mitigate barriers to accessing benefits and opportunities with the department,” the Treasury said.
The department didn’t define racial equity specifically, but Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement the position would help address longstanding economic inequities experienced by communities of color that had been amplified by the pandemic.
“Treasury must play a central role in ensuring that as our economy recovers from the pandemic, it recovers in a way that addresses the inequalities that existed long before anyone was infected with Covid-19,” Ms. Yellen said.
Ms. Bowdler earlier in her career worked on affordable-housing issues in her native Ohio and served as director of economic policy at the civil-rights organization now known as UnidosUS, according to the department.
Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said in a blog post that one of Ms. Bowdler’s first tasks at Treasury will be to create an advisory committee composed of researchers, academics and others to provide the agency’s leadership with counsel on racial-equity issues. Ms. Bowdler will also work to improve access to programs such as the child tax credit and assess how communities of color can better access capital, Mr. Adeyemo said.
“Addressing racial and gender disparities and giving underserved communities greater access to opportunities creates more broadly shared prosperity for all,” Ms. Bowdler said in a statement.
The Biden administration has said it is working to promote economic opportunities for minorities and women in its policies across the federal government. President Biden early in his tenure signed a series of executive orders in support of that goal, and he has often said his economic agenda addressing infrastructure and the social safety net will help to create opportunities for these groups. The Treasury Department similarly created a hub to focus on climate-change issues, another policy priority for the administration, and appointed a counselor to oversee it.
The administration’s efforts to address racial and gender economic gaps have sometimes been met with pushback from Republicans. GOP members of the House Small Business Committee, for example, earlier this year criticized the administration for prioritizing applications from businesses majority-owned by women, veterans or people deemed socially and economically disadvantaged in a Small Business Administration grant program that offered pandemic aid to the restaurant industry. The GOP lawmakers said the process effectively discriminated against business owners who didn’t fall into the designated priority groups.
Write to Amara Omeokwe at [email protected]
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