Upon taking office, Cordray made small business growth one of his top priorities. A former small business owner, Cordray understands the rigors and difficulties of running one’s own enterprise. He immediately revitalized the Treasury’s small business program, called GrowNOW, which fills an important funding niche for the small businesses that create and keep jobs in our hometowns. As of June 2008, GrowNOW is supporting over 700 small businesses in our communities (in contrast to fewer than 100 when Cordray took office) and has affected more than 7,000 Ohio jobs. Because of his efforts to aid small businesses, the U.S. Small Business Administration named him the 2008 Financial Services Champion of the Year for the Midwest Region.

Cordray is also building on his commitment to the financial security of Ohio’s families. As a county treasurer, he advocated strongly for a bill to require financial education for all high school students beginning in 2010. As Ohio Treasurer, he worked with education leaders to create the Teachers Academy, a program that trains teachers to provide financial education even sooner. For this work, the Central Ohio OEA/NEA honored Cordray with the Friend of Education award.

In addition to offering many financial education workshops to senior citizens, students, women, victims of domestic violence, and people who want to repair their credit, the Treasury created an online financial education center, YourMoneyNowOnline.org, that brings important real-time tools and answers to families who either find themselves in financial difficulty or want to avoid it.

An active community servant, Cordray has worked steadfastly to fight home foreclosure in Ohio. The Treasury has helped organize more than 50 Save Our Homes county task forces, which combine the efforts of government, non-profits, and the private sector to match resources to those facing foreclosure. Along with Chief Justice Moyer, Cordray helped organize a state effort to implement mediation programs in foreclosure cases to keep families in their homes. In 2008, Neighborhood Housing Services honored Cordray for his long-time commitment to this issue.

Cordray’s first community service was as a child, volunteering alongside his parents who worked on behalf of the mentally retarded. This experience affected him so deeply that, as a State Representative, he sponsored the Community Service Education Act to promote service learning as a way to teach children responsibility and moral values in our schools.

In addition to serving as Franklin County Treasurer and a State Representative, Cordray was Ohio’s first State Solicitor, conducting and supervising Ohio’s toughest cases in the state and federal courts. In 2005 he was named the national “County Leader of the Year” by American City & County magazine. An attorney by profession, he clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justices Byron White and Anthony Kennedy, and later returned to argue six cases before the Court. He also taught for 15 years at the Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law.

Richard Cordray lives near Grove City with his wife, Peggy, and their twins Danny and Holly.