Originally published by The 19th
When she started at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Marcia Fudge said, the first order of business was staffing up and boosting morale to confront a pandemic that has left millions of Americans economically fragile.
“We were just trying to figure out where all the pieces were, where was a good place to start, because we didn’t have the transition,” Fudge said.
Fudge, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm sat down virtually with The 19th to discuss their first few months in office, how women are leading and working together in the new administration, and how their agencies are responding to a pandemic that has had a disproportionate impact on women, people of color and the LGBTQ+ community.
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Raimondo and Granholm both described similar challenges. Raimondo, the former governor of Rhode Island, estimated that the Commerce Department had “hundreds” of vacant positions when she arrived. But the vacancies also presented an opportunity to improve on agency diversity in a department that has been staffed by mostly men and White people, Granholm said.
“We have made a concerted effort to try to add and make sure the right voices are at the table,” Granholm said, adding that 56 percent of new hires have been people of color, 60 percent have been women and 21 percent have been LGBTQ+.
“Representation is important. We want to insert, intentionally, people who are making these decisions and designing these solutions who look like all of America,” she continued. “I think that’s a really important first step to making sure the policy is right.”
Fudge, Granholm and Raimondo are among the five women servi ..
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