Lending Club has appointed two indivials to their advisory board: Michael S. Barr, law professor at the University of Michigan and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and at the Brookings Institution, and senior Google executive Jeff Huber.
Barr served from 2009-2010 as the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s assistant secretary for financial institutions, where he was a key architect of the Dodd-Frank Act. He previously served as Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin’s special assistant, as deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury, as special advisor to President William J. Clinton, as special advisor and counselor on the policy planning staff at the State Department, and as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter and Judge Pierre N. Leval of the Southern District ofNew York. Barr received his J.D. from Yale Law School, an M. Phil in international relations from Magdalen College, Oxford University, as a Rhodes Scholar, and his B.A., summa cum laude, from Yale University.
“Lending Club’s platform is very innovative and consumer friendly,” said Barr. “The platform offers borrowers a fixed interest rate and fully amortizing loans that help consumers pay down their debt each month.”
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Jeff Huber, Lending Club’s other new advisor, joined Google in 2003 and is currently at Google X. His tenure at Google has included leading Maps, Payments and Travel (2011-2013), and engineering and development for the company’s advertising products (2003-2011) and for Google Apps (2005-2010). Prior to joining Google, Jeff was vice president of architecture and systems development at eBay and senior vice president of engineering at Excite@Home, where he led consumer product and infrastructure development. Jeff holds a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from the University of Illinois and a master’s degree from Harvard University. He is a board member of Electronic Arts and The Exploratorium.
“I’m pleased to join Lending Club’s advisory board,” said Huber. “Their platform leverages technology to lower costs and empower consumers, with a relentless focus on doing the right thing for its customers.”
This comes on the heels of news that Lending Club is being valued at $2.3 billion, putting it in elite company in regards to companies that are valued that highly while still remaining private. The San Francisco Business Times reports that Lending Club is one of a handful of companies (Pinterest, Airbnb) that is valued that highly while remaining private. Having said that, the company is expected to go public sometime in 2014.
