By The Editors

Jacqueline A. Berrien

President Obama will nominate Jacqueline A. Berrien, Associate Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), to be the new Chair of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the White House said today.

In a statement released by the White House press office, the president said, “Jacqueline Berrien has spent her entire career fighting to give voice to underrepresented communities and protect our most basic rights. Each of us deserves a fair chance to succeed in our workplace and make a contribution to this nation, and I’m confident that Jacqueline’s passion and leadership will ensure that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is living up to that mission. I look forward to undertaking this important work with Jacqueline in the months and years ahead.”

John Payton, LDF’s President and Director-Counsel, applauded the choice. “She will be a terrific head of EEOC,” he remarked. “She will return it to its appropriate mission – ensuring that there’s no discrimination in the job market.”

Berrien has been LDF’s Associate Director-Counsel, helping oversee its national legal advocacy work and scholarships programs since September 2004. From 2001 to 2004 she was a Program Officer in the Ford Foundation’s Peace and Social Justice Program. In the 1980s and 1990s, Berrien was an LDF staff attorney, overseeing its voting rights and political participation work. She had previously worked for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union. Berrien graduated from Oberlin College and Harvard Law School. After law school, she was a clerk for the Honorable U.W. Clemon, a prominent Alabama civil rights attorney during the 1950s and 1960s and the first African American appointed to the U.S. District Court in Birmingham.