By Daniel Vega
Eisenhower Eagles really must soar, after all, look what Adewale Adeyemo has accomplished. He has made history as being the first African-American U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary-designate under President-Elect Biden, he is president of the Obama Foundation, former Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economics under President Obama, as well as Deputy Director of the National Economic Council under President Obama. However, before he was all this he was an Eisenhower Eagle.
Adewale Adeyemo, who goes by “Wally” was born in Nigeria and immigrated to the U.S. when he was very young with his parents and 2 younger siblings. His mother was a nurse and his father was a teacher. After immigrating to the U.S. he was raised in the Inland Empire, where he said he grew up in a 2 bedroom apartment. He attended Eisenhower High School and graduated in 1999. After graduating from Eisenhower he went on to graduate from UC Berkeley with a B.A. degree, at UC Berkeley he was president of the students association. Once graduating from UC Berkeley he obtained a J.D. from Yale Law School. He has said that he first knew that he wanted to be an economist and work in politics because, “In California's Inland Empire, where I had grown up in a working-class neighborhood, the Great Recession hit us hard. We were one of the foreclosure capitals of the United States. The pain of this was real for me.”
Adewale Adeyemo got his first job in politics while he was still in law school as the Director of African American Outreach in John Kerry’s 2004 Presidential Campaign. In 2006 he worked on “The Hamilton Project” which is an economic policy initiative that seeks to advance the economic promise of prosperity, growth, and opportunity to all those who seek it. In 2009 when President Obama took office he served as executive secretary to then U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. After this he became Chief of Staff to U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection. Adewale Adeyemo was also a chief negotiator for international trade under the Obama administration, in fact, Adewale Adeyemo played a key role in brokering the Trans-Pacific Partnership which is a trade agreement between the following countries, The U.S., Vietnam, Singapore, Peru, New Zealand, Mexico, Malaysia, Japan, Chile, Canada, Brunei, and Australia. According to Adeyemo’s former boss, U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, “He (Adeyemo) put together an approach that frankly has withstood the test of time, even though TPP has not had U.S. participation. It became the model of how currency issues were dealt with in subsequent trade agreements.” Yes, you heard that right, a former Eisenhower Eagle created the golden standard of how U.S. currency issues and trade agreements are handled worldwide.
As you have seen Adewale Adeyemo has soared, and so have all Eisenhower Eagles past, present, and future. Keep perservering Eagles even in these troubling times, keep making history like Adewale Adeyemo, keep making Eisenhower High School proud.
Citations
NewsOne.com https://newsone.com/4057229/adewale-wally-adeyemo-deputy-treasury-secretary-biden-administration/
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