More than one and a half years after being appointed to an important position in the administration of US President Joe Biden, Kazi Sabeel Rahman has now been promoted to the political head of the White House regulations office.
The Bangladeshi-American will serve as associate administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), reports Bloomberg.
“Honored and proud to continue to serve at OIRA with this fantastic team in my new role as Associate Administrator! Lots of important and urgent work ahead to facilitate effective, evidence-based, equitable policy on the most critical issues facing the country,” Sabeel tweeted on Thursday.
The office is little-known outside Washington but wields tremendous power over how federal agencies execute the president’s agenda.
It has not had a permanent leader since Biden took office, making Sabeel the top political appointee there nearly two years after he first entered office.
Honored and proud to continue to serve at OIRA with this fantastic team in my new role as Associate Administrator! Lots of important and urgent work ahead to facilitate effective, evidence-based, equitable policy on the most critical issues facing the country.
— K. Sabeel Rahman (@ksabeelrahman) August 31, 2022
No president has taken this long to nominate someone to run OIRA since the position began requiring Senate confirmation in the late 1980s, according to Senate records. The role will be especially important if Democrats lose control of Congress. Without a working majority on Capitol Hill, Biden will need to advance much of his ambitious agenda through regulation.
Biden’s latest regulatory to-do list, released in June, included nearly 2,700 agenda items that defined his ambitions to increase federal oversight of greenhouse gas emissions, transportation, and consumer privacy.
More about Sabeel
Sabeel was named Senior Counselor at the OIRA in January last year.
A Muslim American and the child of Bangladeshi immigrants, Sabeel grew up in New York.
Sabeel is the former president of Demos, a think tank, and an associate professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School.
He is the author of Democracy Against Domination which was published by Oxford University Press in 2017, which won the Dahl Prize for scholarship on the subject of democracy.
His book, Civic Power, looks at how to build a more inclusive and empowered bottom-up democracy.
Sabeel was a co-chair of the Biden-Kamala transition team, one of seven working groups working on far-reaching strategies in light of the in-depth observation of the US economy.
Prior to that, he was a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, a Fellow of the Roosevelt Institute, and a Fellow of New America.
Sabeel has worked extensively with a range of think tanks, advocacy organizations, and foundations to develop novel approaches to addressing these issues.
Also Read - Another Bangladeshi-American gets key role in Biden administration
He had been a featured speaker at high-level events that have included US-Vice President Kamala Harris.
Sabeel has also previously served as a special advisor on economic development strategy in New York City.
He earned his law degree and doctorate at Harvard University and his Masters degrees at the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
According to a Bangladeshi online news portal, Sabeel’s father, Kazi Afzalur Rahman, served as an economic counselor at the Bangladesh Mission in New York as a public servant in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for five years until 1986.
After that he also worked in the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). Retired in 2007, Afzalur worked at ESCAP’s regional office at the United Nations and retired two years ago as director.
One of Sabeel’s two sisters is a senior economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the other lives in New York.
Earlier, Zain Siddique, an American of Bangladeshi descent, was appointed as a senior adviser to the White House Deputy Chief of Staff.
Farah Ahmed, another American of Bangladeshi descent, has become the Chief of Staff of the Under-Secretary of the Rural Development Secretariat under the Ministry of Agriculture in the Biden administration.
Rumana Ahmed, another American of Bangladeshi descent, is also in charge of Biden's transition team's international media team.
Rumana and Farah Ahmed held two different positions under Barack Obama.
He is the author of Democracy Against Domination which was published by Oxford University Press in 2017, which won the Dahl Prize for scholarship on the subject of democracy.
His book, Civic Power, looks at how to build a more inclusive and empowered bottom-up democracy.
Sabeel was a co-chair of the Biden-Kamala transition team, one of seven working groups working on far-reaching strategies in light of the in-depth observation of the US economy.
Prior to that, he was a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, a Fellow of the Roosevelt Institute, and a Fellow of New America.
Sabeel has worked extensively with a range of think tanks, advocacy organizations, and foundations to develop novel approaches to addressing these issues.