Elizabeth Warren, who has been critical of 2020 Democratic rival Pete Buttigieg for not revealing clients from his time as a McKinsey and Co. management consultant, hired three former employees of the firm to staff senior posts at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
In February 2011, Warren, then head of the CFPB, announced a slew of new appointments to the federal agency responsible for consumer protection in the financial sector, with oversight of banks, credit unions, securities firms, payday lenders, debt collectors, and other sectors. Warren described the incoming employees as “top-notch leaders with a wide range of experiences.”
That included Raj Date, whose experience included a decade at Deutsche Bank Securities. Among Date’s previous experiences, he was an engagement manager at McKinsey from September 1996 to August 2001.
And Warren, in 2010 when she was tasked with the initial launch of the CFPB, brought on Rohit Chopra as assistant director in the agency’s student loan oversight and young consumers department. Chopra, who currently works as a commissioner for President Trump’s Federal Trade Commission, started his career at McKinsey from 2008 to 2010.
Also, in November 2011, the CFPB announced that Warren hired Sartaj Alag as an adviser. Before his nearly 10 years in consumer finance, Alag worked as a management consultant at McKinsey.
Alag would later serve as the agency’s chief operating officer before departing in 2018.
The hires reflect Warren’s ongoing professional ties to McKinsey and its alumni during her career as a Harvard Law School professor and as the first head of the CFPB. Warren has of late criticized Buttigieg, 37, mayor of South Bend, Indiana, for not disclosing his clients while working at McKinsey from 2007 to 2010.
The Washington Examiner previously reported that Warren, 70, hired McKinsey for consulting services at Harvard Law in 1999. That year, under her supervision, the school gave McKinsey a between $800,000 to $1 million contract, to help facilitate the school’s “long-term development” plan. Students at the time later criticized that contract as a waste of time and resources.
Warren’s daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi, worked for McKinsey from 1996-1999 as an engagement manager, where she focused on healthcare, finance, education, and pharmaceuticals.
In preparation of her 2020 presidential bid, Warren began criticizing management consulting firms like McKinsey for their work with authoritarian regimes such as China and Saudi Arabia.
“I am concerned that McKinsey’s report on public perception may have been weaponized by the Saudi government to crush criticism of the kingdom’s policies, regardless of McKinsey’s intended purpose for the information,” she wrote in 2018.
Warren’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Warren’s jabs reflect a broader left-wing critique of management consulting firms such as McKinsey, who critics say are responsible for outsourcing or cost-cutting maneuvers, which ultimately hurt workers at the expense of wealthy owners or shareholders.
