Don Graves was announced as the nominee for United States Deputy Secretary of Commerce for the Biden administration.
The position: Manages the day-to-day operations of the Commerce Department.
Native Clevelander Don Graves earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science and history from Williams College, though he initial planned to study biology.
He then earned a Juris Doctor from the Georgetown University Law Center, where he received the Dean’s Award.
Graves initially worked in a law firm and ran a civil rights organization.
From 1995 to 1997, Graves was the vice president and Washington, D.C. office director of New Equality.
From 1997 to 1999, Graves was a policy advisor in the United States Department of the Treasury.
Don also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Small Business, Community Development and Housing Policy at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, where he oversaw the CDFI Fund, the $4B Small Business Lending Fund and the $1.5B State Small Business Credit Initiative. He was also the U.S. Federal representative to the G7 Task Force on Social Impact Investment.
From 1999 to 2005, he was the policy director of Business Roundtable.
He was a founding partner at Graves & Horton, LLC, a legal services firm.
During the presidency of Barack Obama, Graves served as the executive director of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.
After the council disbanded, he became a counselor to Vice President Joe Biden.
In 2016, Biden chose Graves, a cancer survivor himself, to lead the Beau Biden Cancer Moonshot.
After the Obama administration, Graves worked as the head of corporate responsibility and community relations and senior director of corporate community initiatives and relations at KeyBank.
Graves serves on the Executive Committee of the Board of the MetroHealth Foundation and the Board of Trustees of the Community Reinvestment Fund.
He also serves on the Policy Advisory Board of the Biden Institute at the University of Delaware and on the Advisory Board of the Commission on Economic Inclusion.
He is a fellow of the National Association of Public Administration.
Much of his work has been on economic and business issues, with a frequent focus on community development.