The Biden-Harris Administration announced leadership for the newly-established CHIPS for America offices. These roles will be housed at the White House and the U.S. Department of Commerce. The announcements include executives experienced in large-scale program management, finance and the government’s needs for accountability. These leaders, along with the staff they are hiring, will be responsible for the implementation of the CHIPS and Science Act’s historic $50 billion investment in the semiconductor industry.
Ronnie Chatterji will serve as the White House Coordinator for CHIPS Implementation at the National Economic Council (NEC). In this role he will manage the work of the CHIPS Implementation Steering Council, as laid out in President Biden’s Executive Order on CHIPS Implementation and will work closely with the National Security Council, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Department of Commerce and the Steering Council to ensure effective interagency coordination.
At Commerce, Michael Schmidt will serve as Director of the CHIPS Program Office, Eric Lin will serve as Interim Director of the CHIPS Research and Development Office, and Todd Fisher will serve as Interim Senior Advisor in the CHIPS Program Office, housed within NIST. Donna Dubinsky will serve as Senior Counselor to the Secretary for CHIPS Implementation and J.D. Grom will serve as Senior Advisor to the Secretary on CHIPS Implementation. Dubinsky and Grom will work in the Office of the Secretary.
“After outlining a thoughtful and comprehensive strategy for CHIPS for America, we are wasting no time building an office with experts and leaders who will efficiently execute this work,” said Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. “These leaders bring decades of experience in government, industry and the R&D space, with a special emphasis on standing up and implementing large-scale programs. Their work will be essential to bolstering our supply chains, spurring historic investments in research, strengthening our national security, and creating good-paying jobs for the American people.”
“This leadership team brings enormous experience and skill to the cross-agency implementation effort already underway. In his role at the White House, Ronnie will help coordinate a unified approach to our key implementation priorities while ensuring that we have guardrails and oversight in place to responsibly spend taxpayer dollars,” said Brian Deese, Director of the National Economic Council.
Aaron “Ronnie” Chatterji, White House Coordinator for CHIPS Implementation
Aaron “Ronnie” Chatterji has served as the Chief Economist of the Department of Commerce since April 2021. In this role, Chatterji has been the principal economic adviser to the Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and responsible for developing policy related to U.S. competitiveness, labor markets, supply chains, innovation, entrepreneurship, and economic growth.
Chatterji previously worked in the Obama Administration, serving as a senior economist at the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers and as a visiting Associate Professor at Harvard Business School.
Chatterji is currently on leave from his position as the Mark Burgess & Lisa Benson-Burgess Distinguished Professor of Business and Public Policy at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. Chatterji also has served as a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and worked as a financial analyst at Goldman Sachs.
He received his Ph.D. from the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley and his B.A. in Economics from Cornell University.
Michael Schmidt, Director of the CHIPS Program Office
Michael Schmidt most recently served as a Senior Advisor at the Treasury Department. At Treasury, he managed implementation of the Child Tax Credit program in the American Rescue Plan, which provided monthly payments to more than 37 million families and lifted more than 3 million children out of poverty. Prior to joining Treasury, Schmidt served as the Commissioner of the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, which oversees the state’s tax system and collects more than $100 billion in revenue annually. Before then, Schmidt served as Deputy Secretary for economic development in New York, where he oversaw policy and operations for 12 state agencies and authorities covering economic development, housing, and tax. Schmidt previously served in the Office of Domestic Finance at the U.S. Treasury Department and as a financial analyst at the Yale Investments Office.
He holds a J.D. and a B.A. from Yale.
Eric Lin, Interim Director, CHIPS Research and Development Office
Eric Lin’s primary position is the Director of the Material Measurement Laboratory (MML) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). MML serves as the nation’s reference laboratory for measurements in the chemical, biological, and materials sciences serving a broad range of industry sectors including advanced materials development, biotechnology, and environmental monitoring. He has conducted and led research programs in semiconductor electronics processing, nanoscale materials, advanced manufacturing, and the Materials Genome Initiative.
Dr. Lin received a B.S.E. from Princeton University, and a Master’s and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford, in chemical engineering. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Chemical Society.
Todd Fisher, Interim Senior Advisor, CHIPS Program Office
Todd Fisher currently serves as Program Director for the American Rescue Plan Funds at the Economic Development Administration (EDA) in the U.S. Department of Commerce where he is responsible for all aspects of the implementation of EDA’s $3 billion American Rescue Plan programs, including the Build Back Better Regional Challenge and the Good Jobs Challenge. Fisher had a 30-year career in the finance and investment industry as an investor and C-level business leader. At the end of 2017, Fisher decided to retire from Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co to pursue a second career focused on social impact. He spent a year as a Fellow in Harvard’s Advanced Leadership Initiative (ALI) and then joined Year Up, a workforce-oriented not-for-profit, where he was Managing Director of Scalable Solutions from 2019 to 2021.
Fisher holds a BA in Biology from Brown University, an MA in International Affairs from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and an MBA in Finance from the Wharton School.
Donna Dubinsky, Senior Counselor to the Secretary for CHIPS Implementation
Donna Dubinsky is a serial entrepreneur best known for her work as CEO of Palm Computing and then Handspring, pioneers of the first successful handheld computers and smartphones. Previously, Dubinsky spent 10 years in a multitude of sales, sales support, and logistics functions—both at Apple and at Claris, an Apple software subsidiary. She founded Numenta in 2005.
Dubinsky earned a B.A. from Yale University and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.
J.D. Grom, Senior Advisor to the Secretary on CHIPS Implementation
J.D. Grom joined the Commerce Department in October 2021, where until recently, he performed the duties of the Assistant Secretary for Legislative & Intergovernmental Affairs. In this role, Grom helped lead the Administration’s legislative strategy to pass the CHIPS and Science Act among other Department priorities. Prior to Commerce, Grom had two stints working in the House of Representatives. First for his hometown representative, Congresswoman Melissa Bean (IL-08) and later as Executive Director of the House New Democrat Coalition. In between those roles, he served at the U.S. Department of the Treasury where he advised on the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) primarily as a Senior Advisor to Assistant Secretary Timothy Massad.
Grom holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he double majored in Political Science and Economics.
