She served in Governor Ed Rendell's cabinet as the Secretary of the Department of Aging.
In 2013 she joined the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to serve as the head of the Office for Older Americans.
She received her bachelor's degree from State University of New York at Stony Brook attending as a Governor's Regents Scholar.
degree from Antioch University during which she served as an aide to US Congressman Tom Downey (D.NY), and working in publishing in Oxford, UK, she was a staff attorney at the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, D.C., where she prosecuted telemarketing fraud and other cases of consumer fraud.
She chaired the Attorney General's Special Commission on Aging, dealing primarily with fraud on the elderly.