Jelena McWilliams

Born Jelena Obrenić (Serbian Cyrillic: Јелена Обренић) in Belgrade, Serbia in the former Yugoslavia, McWilliams traveled to the United States at age 18 as part of a high-school exchange program. She attended the University of California at Berkeley for college. She funded her education by working a series of minimum-wage jobs. She wrote her thesis on the war in her native Yugoslavia.[4] McWilliams graduated with highest honors with a Bachelor of Science in political science and went on to earn her law degree from the UC Berkeley School of Law.[5][6]

McWilliams began practicing law working with tech firms at Morrison & Foerster[4] LLP in Palo Alto, California and then moved to Hogan & Hartson LLP, now Hogan Lovells LLP, in Washington, D.C.[5]

From 2007 to 2010, McWilliams worked as a lawyer at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors,[5] where she focused on a proposal for rules meant to make it easier for consumers to dispute mistakes on their credit reports and to understand their mortgages.[4]

McWilliams worked in the United States Senate for six years, first as assistant chief counsel for the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee and then as chief counsel and deputy staff director for the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.[5] At the banking committee, McWilliams worked with chairpersons Senator Richard Shelby (R, Alabama) and Senator Mike Crapo (R, Idaho) on, among other issues, the implementation of and efforts to rework or repeal the 2010 Dodd-Frank banking-regulation reform act.[4]

McWilliams served as executive vice president, chief legal officer, and corporate secretary for Fifth Third from January 2017 until May 2018.[7]

McWilliams, who is a single mother, has one daughter. She moved her parents from Yugoslavia to the United States after saving enough money to do so.[4]

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