Beatty to Chair New House Financial Panel on Diversity
A Democratic lawmaker who wants to apply the NFL's approach to diversifying its coaches to the Federal Reserve will chair a first-of-its-kind congressional panel charged with examining diversity in financial industries and services.
Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) was named Jan. 24 chair of the Diversity and Inclusion subcommittee. The panel is a newly formed subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee, overseeing policies and issues in an industry that research shows lacks women and minorities in management positions.
"I want us to get beyond checking the box," Beatty said in an interview with Bloomberg Law. "I want us to say the ‘so what.'"
Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) has said diversity will be one of her priorities as the first woman and first African American to chair the financial services committee. Her focus on the issue could help elevate the subcommittee's work as institutional investors and Washington's business lobby get behind the drive to diversify firms from Wall Street to Silicon Valley.
Beatty Rule
Topping Beatty's agenda for the subcommittee is a bill she wrote that takes a page from the National Football League's playbook. Under the bill (H.R. 281), the Fed would be required to interview female and minority candidates to lead its regional banks.
She calls it the Beatty Rule because it's modeled after the NFL's Rooney Rule, which similarly seeks to increase diversity by requiring teams to interview minority candidates for head coach vacancies. Some companies, including Amazon.com Inc., have likewise adopted NFL-inspired policies for their boards of directors.
Waters also announced that Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) will chair another subcommittee on Investor Protection, Entrepreneurship and Capital Markets while Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) will head the subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Financial Institutions.
Other subcommittee chairs include Reps. William Lacy Clay (D.-Mo.) for Housing, Community Development and Insurance; Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) for National Security, International Development and Monetary Policy; and Al Green (D-Texas) for Oversight and Investigations.
This article was originally published on January 28, 2019 by Bloomberg Law.