On November 16, President Barack Obama announced the nomination of Julie Brill '85, a former Root-Tilden Scholar, to the Federal Trade Commission. She would join Jonathan Leibowitz '84, FTC chairman, on the commission.
Brill, currently the senior deputy attorney general and chief of consumer protection and antitrust for the North Carolina Department of Justice as well as a lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School, was previously an assistant attorney general for consumer protection and antitrust in Vermont for two decades. Senator Patrick Leahy, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called Brill's nomination "a tonic for an FTC that too often over the last decade has languished while consumers' interests have given way to special interests. Vermont has a vibrant record of consumer and privacy protection second to none, and Julie Brill did a masterful job in defending and renewing those rights."
The same day that Brill's nomination became public, the White House announced the nomination of Beatrice Welters as ambassador to the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. Welters is president and chairman of the AnBryce Foundation, which she co-founded with her husband, Anthony Welters '77, chairman of the NYU School of Law's Board of Trustees. The AnBryce Foundation provides academic and leadership enrichment programs for underserved youth; among its endeavors is the Law School's AnBryce Scholarship Program, which gives full-tuition scholarships to outstanding J.D. students who are among the first in their immediate family to pursue a graduate degree.
Of Brill, Welters, and their fellow nominees, Obama said, "These individuals bring a depth of experience to their respective roles, and I am confident they will serve my administration and the American people well."
Posted on November 18, 2009