ONE ON ONE WITH ROSIE RIOS NATION'S TREASURER TAKES WOC BEHIND THE SCENES B
Before taking her cur- rent job as treasurer of the United States, Rosie Gumataotao Rios probably best was known for the job she lost in 2003 when then-Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown fired her in a politi- cal spat over her support of a proposed baseball stadium.
Rios was then-director of the Oakland Economic and Redevelopment Division, a job she held after serv- ing in similar posts in the smaller bay area cities of Union City, San Leandro and Fremont.
After leaving her job in Oakland, Rios became a principal at Red River Associates, a consult- ing firm specializing in economic-development projects involving a public sector partner. Later, she
Maybe the most visible— some would say coolest— part of Rios’s job is that her signature appears on the lower left portion of the nation’s paper currency.
The notion that her name one day would be etched on the nation’s money had to seem impossible when Rios was growing up in Hayward, Calif. A first gen- eration Mexican American, Rios and her eight sib- lings were raised by their divorced mother.
Rosie Gumataotao Rios United States Treasurer
became investments management director at MacFarlane Partners, a minority-owned real estate investment firm in San Francisco.
After volunteering in President Obama’s campaign, Rios was selected to be U.S. treasurer, a post older than the Treasury Deparment itself. The job’s original function was to raise money for the Revolutionary War, but that role has evolved with the times.
Currently, Rios reports to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner on coinage and currency circulation and the production of other government financial instruments. She also oversees the nation’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing as well as the U.S. Mint, while working on the government’s efforts to foil counterfeiters. She also is a principal emissary for the department on community development and public engagement.
literature.
Her first job after graduating Harvard was as a com- mercial property underwriter for a San Francisco-based insurance company. Rios eventually moved to Union City where she became the city’s redevelopment agency manager and, later, a development specialist for nearby San Leandro.
In 1997, Rios became the director of economic develop- ment for Fremont, a position that she held for four years before moving to Oakland.
Women of Color magazine recently talked to Rios in her spacious corner office at the Treasury Department, which is next to the White House in Washington, D.C. The con- versation follows here:
WOC: What does the treasurer of the United States do?
www.womenofcolor.net WOMENOFCOLOR | SPRING 2011 9
As a teenager, Rios worked in a library warehouse, often pushing her home- work off until late in the night. Still, she was a stellar student. After graduating from high school, Rios went to Harvard University where she graduated with a degree in sociology and Romance languages and
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