Daughter of immigrants from Jammu and Kashmir, she is an Obama administration alumnus.
As Deputy Director of the National Economic Council, Sameera Fazili is part of the White House senior staff. Her expertise is in domestic and international economic development, with a focus on inclusive economic growth, access to finance, and social enterprise.
Previously, she served in the Obama administration as a senior policy advisor on the White House’s National Economic Council and as a senior advisor at the U.S. Treasury Department in both Domestic Finance and International Affairs.
At the National Economic Council, she covered retirement, consumer finance, and community and economic development. At the Treasury, she worked on issues of domestic policy ranging from community development financial institutions (CDFIs) to housing finance to small business finance.
Prior to joining the government, she worked as a clinical lecturer at Yale Law School, her alma mater, where she taught in the community and economic development program.
Prior to being tapped by Biden, Fazili was the Economic Agency lead on the Biden-Harris Transition. Fazili joined the transition team after serving as the Director of Engagement for Community and Economic Development at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. She also worked at ShoreBank, a CDFI bank.
Fazili, daughter of two physicians,Dr. Mohammad Yusuf Fazili and Dr. Rafiqa Fazili, who emigrated from Sringar, Kashmir, India, in 1970, was born in Williamsville, New York, a suburb of Buffalo. She went to medical school for two years to pursue her parents’ profession before dropping out and enrolling for bachelor’s degree in social studies at Harvard College. After the under-graduation, she earned a law degree from Yale Law School. She also worked as a clinical lecturer of law at Yale Law School.
Fazili and her husband have three children.
READ MORE:
List of Indian Americans in the incoming Biden administration (January 2, 2021)