Domestic Policy Council

The Domestic Policy Council (DPC) coordinates the domestic policy-making process in the White House and offers advice to the President. The DPC also supervises the execution of domestic policy and represents the President’s priorities to Congress.

Even before the formal creation of the DPC, some form of a domestic policy staff has existed in the White House since the 1960s. President Lyndon B. Johnson assigned a senior-level aide to organize staff and develop domestic policy. In 1970, President Richard M. Nixon issued an executive order that created the Office of Policy Development, a large White House office with jurisdiction over economic and domestic policy. President William J. Clinton split the office, forming the current Domestic Policy Council and the National Economic Council.

Director of Domestic Policy Council Cecilia Muñoz

Cecilia Muñoz is the President’s Domestic Policy Advisor and the Director of the Domestic Policy Council, which coordinates the domestic policy-making process in the White House. Previously, Ms. Muñoz served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Intergovernmental Affairs.

Prior to joining the Obama Administration, Cecilia served as Senior VicePresident for the Office of Research, Advocacy, and Legislation at the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the nation’s largest Latino civil rights organization.  She supervised NCLR’s policy staff covering a variety of issues of importance to Latinos, including civil rights, employment, poverty, farmworker issues, education, health, housing, and immigration.  Her particular area of expertise is immigration policy, which she covered at NCLR for twenty years.  

Ms. Muñoz is the former Chair of the Board of Center for Community Change, and served on the U.S. Programs Board of the Open Society Institute and the Board of Directors of the Atlantic Philanthropies and the National Immigration Forum. 

Ms. Muñoz is the daughter of immigrants from Bolivia and was born in Detroit, Michigan.  She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and her master’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley.  In June 2000, she was awarded a MacArthur Foundation fellowship in recognition of her work on immigration and civil rights. In 2007, she served as the Towsley Foundation Policymaker in Residence at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan.   She has received numerous other awards and recognitions from various sources, including the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, and a variety of local non-profit organizations.