Two named to lead CFPB’s supervision, enforcement operations

Lorelei Salas and Eric Halperin have been named to lead the supervision and enforcement operations of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and will serve as “effective watchdogs over the financial marketplace, especially when it comes to stopping repeat offenders,” bureau Director Rohit Chopra said in a statement Friday.

The bureau supervises banks and credit unions with more than $10 billion in assets and numerous nonbank firms engaged in areas such as credit reporting, debt collection, and mortgages.

Salas, the bureau said, will be joining the CFPB as assistant director for supervision policy and will also serve as the acting assistant director for supervision examinations. From 2016 to 2021, Salas was commissioner of the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. Before that, it said, Salas was the legal director at Make the Road New York, supervising immigration, housing, and employment legal services programs designed to increase access to justice for immigrants and refugees. She also led the legal department at Catholic Migration Services, supervising the same areas of legal practice. Salas, who the bureau said was nominated in 2009 by President Obama as the wage and hour administrator at the Department of Labor, worked at the New York state attorney general’s office in the litigation and labor bureaus and held multiple senior management positions at the New York State Department of Labor. It said she also is the recipient of Open Society Foundations’ Leadership in Government fellowship and has served as a Fulbright Specialist with expertise in U.S. consumer and worker protection laws. She earned an A.A. from La Guardia Community College, a B.A. from Hunter College, and a J.D. from Benjamin N. Cardozo Law School.

Halperin has been appointed the bureau’s assistant director for the Office of Enforcement. The CFPB said Halperin most recently was CEO of Civil Rights Corps and from 2010 to 2014 served in leadership roles in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, first as special counsel for fair lending and later as acting deputy assistant attorney general overseeing the division’s fair housing, fair lending, and employment enforcement programs. The bureau said that while in those roles, Halperin received the Attorney General’s John Marshall Award, the Justice Department’s highest award for excellence in legal performance, and the Attorney General’s Distinguished Service Award. It said he also served as a trial attorney in the civil rights division from 1998 to 2004. The bureau said Halperin has also worked as a senior advisor to Open Society Foundations’ U.S. Program and as the director of the Center for Responsible Lending’s litigation program and its Washington office. He received his B.A. from Wesleyan University and his J.D. from Harvard Law School.

CFPB Names New Chiefs for Supervision and Enforcement Positions