Weeks after naming Nigeria’s Adewale Adeyemo as the deputy treasury secretary, the US president-elect Joe Biden has appointed Nigerian-born Funmi Olorunnipa Badejo as one of his legal advisers at the White House.
The President-elect made announcement when he named additional 20 members of the office of the White House counsel.
Badejo is a lawyer and an alumna of Berkeley Law College in the US, and served as ethics counsel in the same office toward the end of the President Barrack Obama administration.
She, alongside other lawyers of the Office of White House Counsel will be advising the President, the executive office of the president, and the White House staff on legal issues pertaining to the president and the White House.
A statement on the Biden-Harris transition website said that Badejo was general counsel of the house select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis which was chaired by James Clyburn, House Majority Whip.
“Her prior government service includes serving as Counsel for policy to the Assistant Attorney-General in the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, Ethics Counsel at the White House Counsel’s Office and Attorney Advisor at the Administrative Conference of the United States during the Obama-Biden administration,” the statement read.
Funmi, who married another Nigerian Tunde Badejo, is from Kogi state, and she is an alumnus of Berkeley Law College in the United States.
A daughter of an immigrant who chooses to identify herself with Florida, Funmi was the general counsel of the House select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis.
Funmi’s legal career started as an associate with the law firm of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP and was Legal Counsel at Palantir Technologies Inc.
She is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and the University of Florida. Olorunnipa Badejo lives in Washington D.C. with her husband and son, according to her information on the Biden-Harris transition website.
Biden will become the 46th President of the United States after his swearing-in slated for January 20, 2021
He defeated the incumbent President Donald Trump in the November 3 presidential election after scoring over 300 electoral college votes.
