President Obama has announced his intent to nominate Jacqueline Berrien as Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Berrien currently serves as Associate Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF). According to the White House press release on her nomination, Berrien worked as a Program Officer in the Ford Foundation’s Peace and Social Justice Program from 2001 to 2004. Before that, Berrien was an assistant counsel with LDF and directed the Fund’s voting rights and political participation work. According to biographical information provided by the NAACP, as assistant counsel Berrien represented African-American voters in proceedings before the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Courts of Appeals and the U.S. District Courts. Prior to working for the LDF, Berriern was a staff attorney with the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union. Additionally, Berrien has taught in trial advocacy programs at Fordham and Harvard law schools and served on the adjunct faculty of New York Law School. After graduating law school, Berrien clerked for the Honorable U.W. Clemon, the first African-American appointed to the U.S. District Court in Birmingham, Alabama.

Berrien earned her law degree from Harvard Law School, where she served as a General Editor of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, and received her undergraduate degree from Oberlin College.