Kathleen Keest

Assistant Attorney General, Iowa Office of the Attorney General

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Date Recorded:
May 28, 2020

Interviewed by:
Andrew O’Shaughnessy

Biography

Until Kathleen Keest’s retirement, she was a Senior Policy Analyst at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Prior to her time at the FDIC, she served as Senior Policy Counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending, where she focused on predatory lending, preemption and regulatory reform issues. From 1996 to 2004, she was an Assistant Attorney General in Iowa, where she also served as Deputy Administrator of the Iowa Consumer Credit Code. There she acted as a lead counsel on the landmark multi-state case by state Attorneys General and banking regulators against Household, International for its mortgage lending practices. This case resulted in a $484 million settlement, then the largest of its kind. Prior to her service with the Iowa Attorney General’s office, she was a staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center for eleven years, where she co-authored the publications Truth in Lending and The Cost of Credit, among others. She started her career by representing clients in consumer rights cases with the Black Hawk County Legal Aid Society in Waterloo, Iowa. Ms. Keest holds a B.A. from Eastern Illinois University and a J.D. from the University of Iowa.