Rebecca Wasserman of Burlington, former legislative counsel in the Vermont General Assembly's Office of Legislative Counsel, has been named the first executive director of Vermont’s new public retirement-savings program, VT Saves (pdf). Housed in the Office of the State Treasurer, VT Saves is an automatic enrollment Roth IRA savings vehicle for employees who do not currently have access to a workplace savings plan.
“I am so glad to welcome Becky to the treasurer’s office team,” said state Treasurer Mike Pieciak. “We could not have hoped for a more highly qualified and well-respected director to get VT Saves off the ground.”
Wasserman will work with partners across state government and the business community to ensure the VT Saves program launches in 2024 or early 2025. Once fully implemented, the program will serve as many as 88,000 Vermonters. Other states established similar programs in recent years, and assets in those plans already exceed $1 billion.
Wasserman is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and holds a master's in European political economy from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a law degree from Brooklyn Law School. She is co-founder of the Vermont Asylum Assistance Project, a nonprofit serving asylum seekers in Vermont.