Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Career Williams served as the Deputy State Comptroller of Connecticut. Williams also served as executive director of the Community Development Agency in St. Louis, Missouri; assistant director of the Boston (MA) Redevelopment Authority; and adjunct professor at Columbia University. Williams was appointed by President Bill Clinton and confirmed by the United States Senate to serve as the first CFO for the US Department of Agriculture, as well as a founder and Vice Chairman of the U.S. CFO Council. Politics Williams first ran for office while a student at Yale in 1979 when he was elected to the New Haven, Connecticut, Board of Aldermen. He served until 1982 and during that time served as President Pro-Tempore. Williams first rose to prominence in Washington, D.C., as the District of Columbia's Chief Financial Officer (CFO) during the final term of Mayor Marion Barry, who nominated Williams to the position in September 1995. By that time, however, Washington was in the midst of a fiscal crisis of such proportion that Congress had established a financial control board charged with oversight and management of the District's finances. The same legislation had created the position of Chief Financial Officer, which had direct control over day-to-day financial operations of each city agency, and independence from the mayor's office; while Barry had the authority to appoint Williams, only the Control Board had the authority to fire him. This gave Williams an unusual level of political strength in dealings with the mayor, with whom he had a number of very public battles; Williams, who had the support of the Control Board as well as Congress, tended to win these battles, even gaining power in 1996 to hire and fire all budget-related city staffers. Given this political clout, Williams began steering D.C.'s finances toward financial recovery, moving from a $355 million deficit at the end of 1995 to a $185 million surplus in the city's fiscal year 1997. Williams' financial successes in the District made him a popular figure. In January 1998, local media reported that Williams was considering a run for mayor in that year's election; he quickly dismissed the notion, but a "Draft Anthony Williams" movement began building nonetheless. When Barry declined to seek a fifth term as mayor in the spring of 1998, Williams finally entered the race, resigning as CFO to campaign. Williams instantly