By Errin Haines, The 19th
After a 15-year career as a staffer on the Appropriations Committee in the House of Representatives, Shalanda Young became President Joe Biden’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, the first Black woman to serve in this role. She formally took office in March 2022, after serving on an interim basis for a year. Young spoke to The 19th at the end of her historic tenure about her accomplishments, how she brought her lived experience to her leadership, and her departing concerns.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Errin Haines: As your pioneering term comes to an end, what are you most proud of accomplishing as director of the Office of Management and Budget?
Shalanda Young: First of all, Errin, I will still not get comfortable with words like “pioneering” and “historic” A lot of my career ended up with me being in the right place at the right time, and a lot of hard work and finding the niche where I felt like I contributed to this country. I found the Appropriations Committee and realized the impact budgets have on people’s lives. You know, it just heartens my soul to think some family got a Head Start slot. They’ve been on the list all year, and then Mom can go get a part-time job, contribute to the family, pay down a bill, or to hopefully start a college fund, get the bills under control. They will never know me, I will never meet them, but that is okay. So whatever contributions I was able to make by fighting back efforts to cut women and children’s nutrition programs, making sure we paid our Head Start teachers more, but also making sure we had enough slots for kids and families being involved from my time on the Appropriations Committee to here and doubling the child care Block Grant.
Also, you know, OMB is one of those places I get to do domestic and international. Being able to secure Ukraine funding, to me, that’s no less than defending democracy. I’d been to Ukraine three times before Russia’s latest incursion, and I met kids there in child care centers like here. You see people and you realize people aren’t different. Doesn’t matter the country or the language, something doesn’t sit right with your soul if you don’t do something to help defend the country and their children from hostilities.
And looking at what we do from a budget standpoint, through that value lens, I mean, I don’t think I stray too far from how I was raised in this job.
I want to ask you about your approach to this role because one of the things I remember you talking about in your nomination hearing is this idea that a budget is a reflection of your values. And even just listening to you right now, a budget being a reflection of a healthy democracy is really what it sounds like your approach is, in part, and that a federal budget can and should help to make the promise of America real for families and communities. Can you just talk a little bit more about that philosophy and how you brought that philosophy to this role?
We all come from different points of view. I come from a little small town in Louisiana. I know the rural experience when you talk about communities left behind, where we’re losing our young people like myself. We should have some minimums in this country, I think, about education. Communities who may not have a tax base — meaning people who may not have the best-paying jobs — their schools are going to suffer because of their tax base. The federal government should be that backstop so that every kid gets a basic education that can set them on their way to sit in chairs like this.
It still amazes me that I’m the first Black woman to sit in this chair and do budgets. I don’t want to be the last. And I think about these investments in education that ensure I won’t be the last. I’m a product of public education. I’m a product of magnet schools, people thinking outside of the box of how we bring kids together from across communities — that’s what magnet schools do. So all of those decision points by people like me determine what little girls a generation later do and what seats they get to sit in.
