Inside the Fight for Consumer Protection: Q&A with Jennifer Zhang

Jennifer Zhang didn’t set out to become an expert in student debt. What drew her to the issue was a broader question: How do we make sure that economic opportunity is actually within reach for the people who need it most?

That question has followed her across every stop in her career—from the Roosevelt Network chapter at Columbia University, to Senator Elizabeth Warren’s office, to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and now to the nonprofit organization Protect Borrowers.

Along the way, she’s seen how different parts of the policy ecosystem work together: how to write rules that improve outcomes for working families, and how to make sure those rules actually have teeth.

At the CFPB, Zhang worked to protect consumers from unfair financial practices before losing her job as part of the Trump administration’s effort to dismantle much of the agency in February 2025. The experience gave her a firsthand view of what it means to defend consumer protections from the inside.

This interview has been edited lightly for clarity and length.

On the Work

It’s nice to be at different parts of the ecosystem because you can see the ways that, for example, a member of Congress might try to influence the news cycle or put ideas in people’s heads by introducing legislation or writing certain oversight letters. A lot of that is targeted at federal agencies to try to shape the work that they’re doing, but a lot of those ideas also come from advocacy groups like Protect Borrowers and others in the consumer protection space.

It’s interesting to see how the day-to-day work can feel different in each place, and also to see the ways that all these different parts play their role in a broader ecosystem of trying to pass policies that help working families.

The thing about student debt in particular is that we talk about college and higher education as a driver of socioeconomic mobility. If you come from a lower-income family and you want to get ahead, a college degree is often presented as the best pathway to higher rungs of the socioeconomic ladder.

What’s problematic is that we make access to higher education depend upon either how much your family can pay or how much private lenders are willing to lend to you. That certainly reinforces the inequality we think higher education is sometimes a remedy for, and there’d be pretty bad outcomes if we were to rely entirely on debt financing for higher education.

I think that framing gets it wrong on two counts. First, it gets it wrong in terms of the overall economic effects of having a more educated workforce. We know that improves productivity and GDP growth. The way the GI Bill expanded access to higher education in the ’40s and ’50s is a huge part of how the United States grew to have the largest economy in the world and how our colleges became the envy of the world.

I also think it gets it wrong at an individual level. Historically, college was where you sent the children of the wealthiest families to do their finishing education. The promise of the Higher Education Act, and how it expanded access to college, was that higher education should not just be reserved for the wealthiest Americans.

The problem is that state and federal governments used to provide more direct funding for higher education so people didn’t have to take on huge amounts of personal student loan debt. That funding has eroded over time, and now we’ve unfairly shifted the burden for all the public benefits we get from having a more educated workforce onto students.

They’re left dealing with lifelong debt that compounds with interest, and can prevent them from saving for a home, retirement, or having kids. All of that has terrible downstream consequences—not only for Americans who want to go to college or who already have a college degree, but for our economy as a whole.

A Defining Moment

Shortly after I started at my current job at Protect Borrowers, one of our major policy pushes was trying to draw attention to how terrible the “One Big Beautiful Bill” would be for millions of working families.

A few people on my team and I just dived in and tried to put together a complete picture of the changes that were going to happen, and we also tried to calculate how much more it would cost borrowers each year to have this new plan.

I helped calculate the finding that the OBBBA would basically cost an extra $4,000  to $5,000  a year for many borrowers.

Because we put that analysis together so quickly, had it thoroughly footnoted, and showed our homework, it was picked up by the New York Times.

I think that, to me, showed the power of moving fast, putting in the work, being willing to do deep analysis of something very complicated, and demonstrating the human impact that these changes would have.

On What Keeps Her Going

In the last year and a half, at every opportunity that people have had to make themselves heard, they have really expressed anger, outrage, and how deeply upset they are with the way that things are going.

I think there is a really strong sense now that things need to change at a fundamental level, and that gives me a lot of hope.

For the Roosevelt Community

Don’t lose hope.

Remember that by being part of the Roosevelt Network, you have such an incredible community of mentors, Roosevelt Institute staff, former and current elected officials, and policymakers all around the country who are here to root for you and to really help.

I found out about my first job at the CFPB through just talking to people and learning about the agency. That was an incredible opportunity that opened a lot of doors. Don’t be afraid to reach out and ask for recommendations or referrals or just to chat with people and get advice, and remember that there is a community cheering for you.