WASHINGTON, D.C. -

With director Rohit Chopra firmly in place, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau also has filled several high-profile regulatory positions, including the agency’s assistant director for the office of supervision policy and assistant director for the office of enforcement.

Those two officials help the CFPB supervise banks and credit unions with more than $10 billion in assets, as well as many nonbank firms in markets such as credit reporting, debt collection and more.

Filling the roles are Lorelei Salas as assistant director for supervision policy and Eric Halperin as assistant director for the office of enforcement

“Lorelei Salas and Eric Halperin are both distinguished public servants with deep expertise in consumer protection,” Chopra said in a news release. “Together, they will be effective watchdogs over the financial marketplace, especially when it comes to stopping repeat offenders.”

The CFPB indicated Salas also will serve as the acting assistant director for supervision examinations.

From 2016 until earlier this year, Salas served as commissioner of the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, overseeing hundreds of inspectors, attorneys, and other professionals to protect city residents. Under her leadership the agency aggressively pursued corporations that employed unlawful, predatory practices to target low-income and immigrant consumers.

Previously, Salas was the legal director at Make the Road New York, supervising immigration, housing, and employment legal services programs designed to increase access to justice for immigrants and refugees. She also led the legal department at Catholic Migration Services, supervising the same areas of legal practice.

In 2009, Salas was nominated by President Barak Obama as the Wage and Hour Administrator at the U.S. Department of Labor. Salas also worked at the New York attorney general’s office in the Litigation and Labor Bureaus and held multiple senior management positions at the New York State Department of Labor.

Salas is also the recipient of Open Society Foundations’ Leadership in Government fellowship and has served as a Fulbright Specialist with expertise in U.S. consumer and worker protection laws.

Prior to her legal career, Salas worked as a private sector auditor investigating companies’ compliance with their own codes of conduct and with federal and state workplace laws.

Meanwhile, the CFPB highlighted Halperin has served in a number of positions in the non-profit and government sectors. Most recently, Halperin was chief executive officer of Civil Rights Corps.

From 2010 to 2014, Halperin served in leadership roles in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, first as special counsel for fair lending and later as acting deputy assistant attorney general overseeing the division’s fair housing, fair lending, and employment enforcement programs.

While in those roles, the bureau mentioned Halperin received the attorney general’s John Marshall Award, the department’s highest award for excellence in legal performance, and the attorney general’s Distinguished Service Award.

Halperin also served as a trial attorney in the civil rights division from 1998 to 2004.

Halperin has also worked as a senior advisor to Open Society Foundations’ U.S. Program and as the director of the Center for Responsible Lending's Litigation Program and its Washington office.

Beyond those two positions, the CFPB also has tapped four other experienced regulators for crucial positions, including:

— Zixta Martinez will serve as deputy director, and in that role will oversee the bureau’s operations division. Martinez joined the bureau in 2010 to help lead the implementation team and has since served as senior advisor for supervision, enforcement and fair lending, associate director for external affairs, and assistant director for the office of community affairs.

Previously, Martinez was senior director of industry and state relations at Freddie Mac, director at the National Fair Housing Alliance, legislative staff attorney at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, housing policy analyst for the National Council of La Raza and associate staffer at the Housing and Community Development Subcommittee of the Banking Finance and Urban Affairs Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives.

— Karen Andre will serve as associate director for consumer education & external affairs. Prior to joining the CFPB, Andre served in a number of government, campaign, and private sector roles.

Most recently, Andre served as special assistant to the president for Economic Agency Personnel within the executive office of the president. She worked on President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign team, including as a senior advisor for national faith outreach. Following Biden’s election, she joined the presidential transition team as the COVID Engagement Team Lead.

Andre also previously served as White House liaison for the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

— Jan Singelmann is returning to the CFPB to serve as chief of staff. Singelmann previously served as senior litigation counsel in the CFPB’s office of enforcement.

Most recently, Singelmann served as counsel for Senate Banking committee chairman Sen. Sherrod Brown, where his work covered consumer finance and data privacy issues.

— Erie Meyer is returning to the CFPB to serve as chief technologist. Meyer served on the implementation team that launched the CFPB, and became a founding team member of the bureau’s office of technology and innovation.

Most recently, Meyer served as senior advisor to Lian Khan for policy planning and chief technologist at the Federal Trade Commission, and as then-commissioner Chopra’s technology advisor.

Before serving at the FTC, Meyer launched the U.S. Digital Service in the White House. Meyer has also served as senior director for Code for America and senior advisor to the White House’s chief technology officer.

Meyer is co-founder of Tech Ladymafia, and she is a recipient of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Joan Shorenstein Fellowship during which she researched the intersection of open data, journalism and civic life.