On April 28, Terrell McSweeny was sworn in as a Federal Trade Commission commissioner following a 95-1 Senate vote on her confirmation. After 14 months of being one commissioner short (since Chairman Jon Leibowitz left in February 2013), the FTC is now back to full strength on its bench. There is much speculation and interest as to who is McSweeny and what does her appointment mean to the FTC and the business community?
McSweeny’s career history is definitely not that of a typical lawyer. A Senate page at age 16; graduate of Harvard University; a reporter for a small weekly newspaper in West Virginia (and the local NPR station); Georgetown Law School grad; lawyer at O’Melveny & Myers; Vice President Joe Biden’s deputy chief of staff and policy director when he was in the Senate; Biden’s issues director in the 2008 election; deputy assistant to President Obama and domestic policy adviser to Biden on health care, innovation, intellectual property, energy, education, women’s rights, criminal justice and domestic violence; and chief counsel for competition policy and intergovernmental relations at the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.
