Government Briefing: A Conversation with Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo

Dawn Yamane Hewett is a litigation, arbitration, and investigations Partner at Quinn Emanuel, one of the world’s leading litigation and arbitration firms. Dawn draws on decades of experience in policy and international affairs and her prior service as a Deputy General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Commerce. She represents clients in high-stakes disputes in  the U.S. and across the globe, in particular in Latin America and Asia. Dawn is a recognized expert in investment arbitration and cross-border commercial disputes and has extensive experience with disputes administered by the world’s major arbitral institutions. She leverages her experience and multilingual skills in English, Japanese, Spanish, and Portuguese to represent clients in a broad range of industries, including renewable energy, natural resources, transportation,infrastructure, hospitality, manufacturing, consumer goods, and financial services. Dawn also represents clients in government investigations, internal investigations, and related litigation, and has represented clients before most of the largeU.S.government agencies. Ms. Hewett holds advanced degrees from Yale Law School, Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs, and Trinity College Dublin, and undergraduate degrees from the University of Washington, where she was the Student Body President. She clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and prior to law school, worked at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Sierra Leone. Dawn is active in U.S.-Japan circles and the Asian American legal community. She is a U.S.-Japan Council (USJC) Council Leader and a U.S.-Japan Leadership Program (USJLP) Fellow. She is a past president of the Asian Pacific American Bar Association of Greater Washington, DC (APABA-DC) and the current Chair of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA) Leadership Advancement Program. She also serves as legal support to the Washington Japanese Language School on a pro bono basis, which both of her kids attended.

On March 26, 2021, Wally Adeyemo was sworn in as Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. He has been at the center of many of the country’s major economic policy decisions since the 2008 Financial Crisis and has worked in organizations across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors to build a stronger and fairer economy. As Deputy Secretary, Adeyemo serves as the Treasury Department’s number two official and chief operating officer and has taken a leading role in Treasury’s national security, economic inequality, and pandemic-related economic recovery work. Adeyemo previously served at Treasury during the Obama Administration as Senior Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff under Secretary Tim Geithner and Secretary Jack Lew. Adeyemo also served as the first Chief of Staff of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau before moving to the Obama White House in 2015. At the White House, Adeyemo served as Deputy National Security Adviser for International Economics and a Deputy Director of the National Economic Council. In this role, Adeyemo led policymaking on international finance, trade and investment, energy, and environmental issues and served as President Obama’s representative to the G7 and G20. After leaving government in 2017, Adeyemo served as the first president of the Obama Foundation and as a Senior Advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and at BlackRock. Adeyemo holds a B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley and a J.D. from Yale Law School.