White House Media Release:

Kristin Johnson, Nominee for Member of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission

Kristin N. Johnson is the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law at Emory University School of Law. She works on financial markets risk management law and policy with specialization in the regulation of complex financial products including the origination, distribution, and secondary market trading, clearing, and settlement of securities and derivatives.  She has lectured at law schools throughout the United States and published on financial markets regulation. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute, an American Bar Foundation Fellow, and Chair-Elect of the Securities Regulation Section of the Association of American Law Schools. Before joining Emory, Kristin served as an Associate Dean and McGlinchey Stafford Professor of Law at Tulane University Law School.

Prior to her academic appointments, Kristin practiced law firm in New York City advising domestic and international clients on diverse financial transactions. After attending the University of Michigan Law School where she served as an editor of the Michigan Law Review, she clerked for the Honorable Joseph A. Greenaway, Jr. of the District Court of New Jersey, elevated to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. She is a graduate of the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. 

Reta Jo Lewis, Nominee for Director and Chairman of the Export-Import Bank of the United States

Reta Jo Lewis has over 25 years of leadership experience in international affairs, legal, public policy, business and regulatory affairs, and subnational diplomacy. She is a Senior Fellow and Director of Congressional Affairs at the German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF).At GMF, Lewis leads and oversees initiatives, programs, and bipartisan exchanges for members of the U.S. Congress and their European counterparts. She joined GMF in 2015 as a Senior Resident Fellow with the Transatlantic Leadership Program, where she focused on leadership development and subnational diplomacy efforts.  She established and leads GMF’s Women of Color in Transatlantic Leadership Program.  Prior to joining GMF, she served as the first-ever Special Representative for Global Intergovernmental Affairs under Secretary Hillary Clinton at the U.S. Department of State during the Obama-Biden Administration. As Special Representative, Lewis was the chief diplomat in charge of the international efforts tobuild and support strategic relationships between the U.S. Department of State, state and local leaders, and their foreign counterparts. In 2013, she was awarded the Secretary’s Distinguished Service Award.

Prior to joining the State Department, Ms. Lewis was Of Counsel at Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge LLP.  Previous legal experience includes serving as a Shareholder at one of the largest international law firms, Greenberg Traurig LLP. Her legal practice focused on providing strategic corporate, legal, and consulting counsel to the firms’ business, public finance, regulatory, and state and local clients. Ms. Lewis was the first African-American woman to serve as Vice President and Counselor to the President at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. She led the Chamber’s initiatives focused on fostering strategic alliances between small businesses, especially women- and minority-owned businesses, entrepreneurs, and executives. Prior to her tenure at the Chamber, she was Special Assistant for Political Affairs to President Bill Clinton. She is a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Member of the Board of the Leadership Council for Women in National Security. Ms. Lewis received a J.D. from Emory University School of Law, an M.S.A.J. from American University, and a B.A. from the University of Georgia. She is a native of Statesboro, Georgia.

Arthur Jemison, Nominee for Assistant Secretary for Public and Indian Housing at the Department of Housing and Urban Development

James Arthur Jemison II (Arthur) is currently the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Community Planning and Development at HUD. Mr. Jemison joined HUD in January 2021 from the City of Detroit, where he was Group Executive for Planning, Housing & Development, leading the City’s development agenda, working in partnership with Directors of the Housing & Revitalization Department, the Planning & Development Department, the Detroit Land Bank Authority, Detroit Housing Commission (Public Housing Authority). In early 2014, he serves as Director of the new Housing & Revitalization Department for the City of Detroit, to assist as the City recovered from bankruptcy.  Before coming to Detroit, Mr. Jemison served as Deputy Undersecretary and Deputy Director for the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts under Governor Deval Patrick. Prior to that, Mr. Jemison held a variety of public- and private-sector leadership positions in planning, development and public housing, primarily in Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.

Mr. Jemison has a Bachelor of Arts degree, cum laude in Social Thought and Political Economy from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He also holds a Master of City Planning degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was a Public Policy and International Affairs (PPIA) Fellow. Jemison lives in Michigan with his wife, two sons and a daughter.

Alanna McCargo, Nominee for President of the Government National Mortgage Association at the Department of Housing and Urban Development

Alanna McCargo currently serves as Senior Advisor for housing finance in the Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD). Her career in housing spans decades and has centered on how America’s housing finance system can equitably provide credit and capital to households and affordable housing stakeholders. She joined the Biden-Harris Administration after serving as Vice President of the Housing Finance Policy Center at the Urban Institute, a social and economic policy research firm where she led and developed research programming in collaboration with key housing industry, nonprofit, and government agencies to support housing policy research. She developed a body of work focused on reducing racial homeownership gaps, increasing housing affordability, and reducing barriers to accessing credit and capital. McCargo also served as Executive Director of the Mortgage Servicing Collaborative, a cross-sector initiative that identified and developed policy recommendations for mortgage servicing and securitization reforms to enable a more stable housing finance system.

Before joining the Urban Institute, McCargo held roles as Vice President and Head of Government Solutions with CoreLogic, a property and mortgage data analytics firm, and as Vice President with JP Morgan Chase’s Home Lending division. Previously, McCargo spent a decade at Fannie Mae, where she led policy development and secondary mortgage market programs and had leadership roles on key corporate initiatives. From 2008 through 2012 she served as Senior Director of Servicing Portfolio Management and played a central role in the partnership with the US Department of Treasury in executing the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. She was instrumental in foreclosure prevention efforts, loan restructuring, and distressed asset management programs. She was a leader in the work with the Federal Housing Finance Agency on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage servicing alignment efforts. She has a BA from the University of Houston and an MBA from the University of Maryland. She currently resides in Virginia with her husband.