Tom Perez BIO:

Tom Perez currently serves as Senior Advisor to the President Joe Biden and Director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. Perez brings decades of local, state, and federal experience to the White House having served as a Montgomery County, Maryland Council-member; as Secretary of Maryland’s Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation; as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice; as Director of the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; and as the United States Secretary of Labor under President Obama. Perez also served as the Chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) from 2020 to 2023. 

Taking office in the aftermath of the Great Recession, Secretary Perez oversaw the longest streak of private sector job growth on record. He worked tirelessly to ensure that everyone has a shot at the American Dream. Under Secretary Perez’s leadership, the Department transformed the nation’s job training programs to help workers compete for 21st century careers. He dedicated every day as Secretary to improving the lives of America’s workers: pushing for new overtime rules to ensure every worker gets a fair day’s pay for a long day’s work; extending minimum wage and overtime protections to home care workers; overseeing new rules to protect workers’ hard-earned retirement savings; and establishing new worker safety rules, including a long overdue updated standard for silica dust. During his tenure, the Department also established rules to raise wages, provide paid sick leave, and ensure employment protections for employees of federal contractors. Secretary Perez also engineered a dramatic turnaround in the Department’s employee engagement. In the words of President Obama: “[He] has been one of the best Secretaries of Labor in our history. If you look at his body of work on behalf of working people... he has been extraordinary.”

He received his bachelor’s degree from Brown University, his master’s degree from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and his Juris Doctorate from Harvard Law School.