Chief Implementation Officer for the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)
Laurel Blatchford was appointed as Treasury’s Chief Implementation Officer for the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in January 2023. In this newly created role, Laurel is leading a team responsible for the effective and equitable implementation of Treasury’s provisions of the IRA across Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Laurel and her team work closely with a range of internal and external partners to implement, increase awareness and drive uptake of the IRA’s landmark clean energy tax credits; the team also collaborates closely with the IRS as it deploys its once-in-a-generation modernization funding made possible by the IRA.
Over the course of her 25-year career, Laurel has held senior leadership roles in the non-profit, government and philanthropic sectors. Most recently, as Managing Director and Senior Advisor at Blue Meridian Partners, she collaborated on $100M of investments focused on place-based economic mobility and advised Blue Meridian’s portfolio of grantees on their approach to policy as a tool for impact and influence. Prior to joining Blue Meridian in 2020, she was President of Enterprise Community Partners, one of the nation's largest affordable housing and community development nonprofits. During her six-year tenure at Enterprise, Laurel led a team of 250 staff working in 12 markets across the United States to build capacity on the ground, pilot new advisory solutions for local leaders, drive state and local policy solutions, and connect partners to various forms of capital.
Laurel also served as a senior political appointee in the Obama Administration, first as Chief of Staff at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development from 2009 to 2013, and then as Executive Director of the Hurricane Sandy Task Force, where she led the creation of a new framework for effective recovery from climate disasters. Prior to that, she served as a senior leader at City Hall and in New York City’s housing agency during the Bloomberg Administration. She also served on both the Obama-Biden and Biden-Harris presidential transition teams and was nominated for a Senate-confirmed role in the Biden-Harris Administration. She is a graduate of Williams College and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and lives with her family in Washington DC.