Sherrod Brown: “today I ask my colleagues to join me in honoring the Banking and Housing Committee staff. Their hard work and dedication…”

“today I ask my colleagues to join me in honoring the Banking and Housing Committee staff. Their hard work and dedication took a committee that once fought only for Wall Street and transformed it into a body focused on the issues that matter most to the people we serve. All the important work we have done on the Banking and Housing Committee over the last decade would not have been possible without the leadership of our staff director Laura Swanson. Laura is a lifelong public servant, a brilliant strategic mind, and one of my most trusted advisers. She puts workers at the center of everything she does and she has since the very beginning of her career. Laura joined the committee in 2011, working for her home State Senator, Chairman Tim Johnson of South Dakota. When I became the lead Democrat on the Banking and Housing Committee in 2015, I brought Laura onto my staff, and she rose to staff director in 2019. Laura is the first woman to ever hold the top job on this committee for a Democrat, and she has done this job for 6 years, longer than any of the six most recent Democratic staff directors. She has strategized with me through every crisis, every markup, every hearing. As a manager, Laura cares about the whole person. Her door is always open to staff. As often as people ask her for work advice, they ask for a book recommendation or talk about music together or tell her about a recent trip. Laura is kind, decent, and humble.…”