Elizabeth Wilkins has the kind of credentials that could take her anywhere in DC: degrees from Sidwell Friends and Yale Law School, clerkships with Elena Kagan and Merrick Garland, a stint as senior adviser to White House chief of staff Ron Klain. But during the first year of the Biden presidency, as Wilkins watched the new administration take shape, one particular agency struck her as “the most exciting place” to tackle economic injustice: the Federal Trade Commission.
Once a backwater, the FTC has recently emerged as a cauldron of provocative policy ideas under its young, ambitious chair, Lina Khan. In February, Wilkins became director of the FTC’s office of policy planning, and she now leads the agency’s inquiries into issues such as prescription-drug prices, the baby-formula shortage, and, of course, antitrust.
Wilkins says she’s eager to “make people think twice about setting up a whole business model that is premised on extraction and exploitation.” For decades, the FTC has primarily evaluated mergers in terms of whether they would raise consumer prices. Now Wilkins wants the agency to consider a broader array of potential harms, including how mergers hurt workers’ wages and hinder small businesses’ ability to compete. The goal: “Making the government sensitive to the needs and wants of ordinary people,” she says.
A native of Southwest DC, Wilkins is the daughter of Patricia King, the first Black person to earn tenure at Georgetown Law, and the noted journalist and civil-rights leader Roger Wilkins, whose career included a stretch heading the Community Relations Service under President Lyndon Johnson. “When this country was burning in 1968, he was the government guy they sent to understand what’s happening on the ground,” she says, describing her father’s efforts to witness the pain and rage people felt on the streets and “make it real” to government officials who had the power to help.
Shaped by her parents’ commitment to public service, Wilkins has avoided the private sector. In 2015, after clerking for Justice Kagan, she took a job with DC attorney general Karl Racine, helping start his office’s public-advocacy division. “Honestly, it had been a dream of mine to work for the city,” she says. “I grew up here with an enormous amount of privilege, and that creates an obligation to give back.”
Now Wilkins and her husband—who met in kindergarten at Sidwell and live in Mount Pleasant—are raising their kids with the same sense of responsibility. Wilkins’s dad used to tell her every morning to “use this day well,” and she keeps a sign with that phrase in her office. It reminds her to always ask, “How am I using this day? And who am I using it for?”
This article appears in the August 2022 issue of Washingtonian.
Elizabeth Wilkins Could Probably Work Anywhere. Why the FTC?
She’s worked for Elena Kagan, Ron Klain, and Merrick Garland.
Elizabeth Wilkins has the kind of credentials that could take her anywhere in DC: degrees from Sidwell Friends and Yale Law School, clerkships with Elena Kagan and Merrick Garland, a stint as senior adviser to White House chief of staff Ron Klain. But during the first year of the Biden presidency, as Wilkins watched the new administration take shape, one particular agency struck her as “the most exciting place” to tackle economic injustice: the Federal Trade Commission.
Once a backwater, the FTC has recently emerged as a cauldron of provocative policy ideas under its young, ambitious chair, Lina Khan. In February, Wilkins became director of the FTC’s office of policy planning, and she now leads the agency’s inquiries into issues such as prescription-drug prices, the baby-formula shortage, and, of course, antitrust.
Wilkins says she’s eager to “make people think twice about setting up a whole business model that is premised on extraction and exploitation.” For decades, the FTC has primarily evaluated mergers in terms of whether they would raise consumer prices. Now Wilkins wants the agency to consider a broader array of potential harms, including how mergers hurt workers’ wages and hinder small businesses’ ability to compete. The goal: “Making the government sensitive to the needs and wants of ordinary people,” she says.
A native of Southwest DC, Wilkins is the daughter of Patricia King, the first Black person to earn tenure at Georgetown Law, and the noted journalist and civil-rights leader Roger Wilkins, whose career included a stretch heading the Community Relations Service under President Lyndon Johnson. “When this country was burning in 1968, he was the government guy they sent to understand what’s happening on the ground,” she says, describing her father’s efforts to witness the pain and rage people felt on the streets and “make it real” to government officials who had the power to help.
Shaped by her parents’ commitment to public service, Wilkins has avoided the private sector. In 2015, after clerking for Justice Kagan, she took a job with DC attorney general Karl Racine, helping start his office’s public-advocacy division. “Honestly, it had been a dream of mine to work for the city,” she says. “I grew up here with an enormous amount of privilege, and that creates an obligation to give back.”
Now Wilkins and her husband—who met in kindergarten at Sidwell and live in Mount Pleasant—are raising their kids with the same sense of responsibility. Wilkins’s dad used to tell her every morning to “use this day well,” and she keeps a sign with that phrase in her office. It reminds her to always ask, “How am I using this day? And who am I using it for?”
This article appears in the August 2022 issue of Washingtonian.
Most Popular in News & Politics
Most Powerful Women in Washington 2025
IRS Tells Furloughed Feds They’ll Get Back Pay After Trump Says They Might Not, Trump Lands a Big Peace Deal, and Publix Is Coming to NoVa
Cheryl Hines Suddenly Has a Lot to Say About RFK Jr. and MAGA
Washington DC’s 500 Most Influential People of 2025
Trump’s Shutdown Antics Vex Republicans, Ireland Hopes to Sell Its DC Embassy, and Renaissance Festival Sues Most Foul Varlets
Washingtonian Magazine
October Issue: Most Powerful Women
View IssueSubscribe
Follow Us on Social
Follow Us on Social
Related
Want to Live in a DC Firehouse?
DC Punk Explored in Three New History Books
The Local Group Fighting to Keep Virginia’s Space Shuttle
Alexandria’s “Fancy Pigeon” Has a New Home
More from News & Politics
Eduardo Peñalver Will Be Georgetown University’s 49th President
Cheryl Hines Suddenly Has a Lot to Say About RFK Jr. and MAGA
Shutdown Hits Two-Week Mark, House Speaker Feels Threatened by Naked Cyclists, and Big Balls’ Attackers Get Probation
Anti-Trump Encampment Returns to Union Station After Bizarre Permit Revocation Saga
White House Signals Very Long Shutdown, Commanders Game Ends in Heartbreak, and Betting Markets Sour on Jay Jones
DC Singer Kenny Iko Is Turning Heads on “The Voice”
Trump Lays Off Thousands, Blames Shutdown; Ed Martin Spitter Won’t Go to Prison; Jimmy Kimmel Sponsors Georgetown Player
New Anacostia Market Is a Dream Come True for Community