President Trump's nominee to run a top banking agency will share her unusual personal story at a nomination hearing Tuesday, telling senators that she arrived in the U.S. alone on her 18th birthday with only $500.
Jelena McWilliams, Trump's pick to head the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, left the former Yugoslavia as a minor to come to the U.S., before working her way up as a congressional staffer, Federal Reserve staffer, and bank attorney.
"Appearing before you 26 and a half years later as the nominee to lead a historic federal agency is nothing short of an American Dream," McWilliams wrote in testimony prepared for a nomination hearing Tuesday.
McWilliams would replace Obama appointee Martin Gruenberg atop the agency, which is responsible for regulating banks that receive federal deposit insurance and making sure that they are safe. The Trump administration has called for substantially rewriting the new rules established following the financial crisis, many of which Gruenberg helped implement.
In making her case for her appointment, McWilliams touted her experience in Congress and working at Fifth Third Bank.
But she also referred to her family's travails in Yugoslavia as a reason to trust her with the banking system.
"My parents’ meager savings disappeared overnight when a local bank closed its doors. Yugoslavia had no deposit insurance and my then 68-year old father returned to work as a day laborer," she said, promising not to take the FDIC's "mission or my duties lightly."
