WASHINGTON – The life story of the nation’s newest assistant attorney general began, in essence, at the corner of Hertel and Starin avenues in North Buffalo.
There, for many years, a pair of first-generation Italian Americans named Philip and Claudette Lauria ran the family business and a neighborhood institution: Les Salon Des Angelos. Their teenage daughter, Jolene Ann Lauria, kept the books at the family salon.
Four decades later, Jolene Lauria keeps the books at the U.S. Department of Justice.
On Dec. 21, 31 years to the day after her father’s death, Lauria was appointed assistant attorney general for administration. She also serves as the chief financial officer and top ethics official at a sprawling federal agency with more than 115,000 employees spread across all 50 states.
And to hear Lauria tell it, she’s where she is because of what she learned from her family’s business.
“I worked there from the time my chin could reach the counter, because I wanted to go into work with my dad,” Lauria, 58, said. “But watching the way he operated his business and the way he interacted with people and just his sort of core ethics – it stays with me today … He built this connection with people. And I really learned how to deal with people and understand that the people that you serve and the people that work with you are your most important assets.”
Lauria has wrapped up a number of awards for federal employees in her 34 years in public service, but still, in some ways her journey to the top nonpolitical appointment in the Justice Department was an unlikely…
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