Damon Silvers

Damon A. Silvers is the director of policy and special counsel for the AFL-CIO. He joined the AFL-CIO as associate general counsel in 1997.

Silvers serves pro bono as a special assistant attorney general for New York. He is also a member of the Investor Advisory Committee of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Treasury Department's Financial Research Advisory Committee, and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board's Standing Advisory Group and its Investor Advisory Group.

Silvers served as deputy chairman of the Congressional Oversight Panel for TARP from 2008 to 2011. Between 2006 and 2008, he was chairman of the Competition Subcommittee of the Treasury's Advisory Committee on the Auditing Profession and as a member of the department's Investor's Practice Committee of the President's Working Group on Financial Markets.

Before joining the AFL-CIO, Silvers worked for the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers, the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers and as a law clerk at the Delaware Court of Chancery for Chancellor William T. Allen and Vice Chancellor Bernard Balick.

Silvers led the successful efforts to restore pensions to the retirees of Cannon Mills lost in the collapse of Executive Life, as well as severance owed laid-off Enron and WorldCom workers following those companies' failure. From 2003 to 2006, he served as pro bono counsel to the chairman of ULLICO, recovering more than $50 million related to improperly paid executive compensation.

Silvers received his J.D. (with honors) from Harvard Law School. He received his MBA (with high honors) from Harvard Business School and is a Baker Scholar. He is a graduate of Harvard College (summa cum laude) and studied history at Kings College, Cambridge University.

His publications include "How We Got Into This Mess," published in The American Prospect (2008); "Securities and Exchange Commission: Restoring the Capital Markets Regulator and Responding to Crisis," published in Change for America: A Progressive Blueprint for the 44th President (2008); "The Legacy of Deregulation and the Financial Crisis—Linkages Between Deregulation in Labor Markets, Housing Finance Markets, and the Broader Financial Markets," published in The Journal of Business & Technology Law (2009); and "Rebuilding Workers' Retirement Security: A Labor Perspective on Private Pension Reform," published in Restructuring Retirement Risk Management in a Defined Contribution World (2010).