Cassandra Butts
| Cassandra Butts | |
|---|---|
| Personal details | |
| Born |
August 10, 1965 New York, New York, U.S. |
| Died | May 25, 2016 (aged 50) Washington, D.C., U.S. |
| Alma mater |
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Harvard University |
Cassandra Quin Butts (August 10, 1965 – May 25, 2016) was an American lawyer, policy expert, and Deputy White House counsel. On December 23, 2008, Butts was selected by President-elect Obama to serve as Deputy White House Counsel, focusing on domestic policy and ethics. She was also on the advisory board for then-president-elect Barack Obama's presidential transition team. She stepped down as Deputy White House Counsel in November 2009 and served as Senior Advisor in the Office of the Chief Executive Officer at the Millennium Challenge Corporation. In February 2014, Obama nominated her to be the ambassador to the Bahamas, but by February 1, 2015, the Senate had not confirmed her to the post. She was re-nominated to the position on February 5, 2015.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Butts moved to Durham, North Carolina, at age 9. She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and in 1991 from Harvard Law School where she was a classmate of Barack Obama and the two became close friends.
Butts' first job was as a counselor at the Y.M.C.A. in Durham, North Carolina. From 1991-1992, Butts worked as a fellow with the National Health Law Program (NHeLP), a nonprofit organization advocating for the rights of low-income and underserved people to access quality healthcare. After college she worked for a year as a researcher with the African News Service in Durham. She was an election observer in the 2000 Zimbabwean parliamentary elections and a counsel to Senator Harris Wofford of Pennsylvania. Butts did litigation and policy work for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc, and spent seven years working a senior adviser to US Representative Dick Gephardt of Missouri. She became the Senior Vice President for Domestic Policy at the Center for American Progress.
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