Staff

Ed Mierzwinski Federal Consumer Program Director 202-546-9707 x314

Expertise

consumer protection, banking & ATMs, health care, financial institutions, insurance, playground safety, privacy, prescription drugs, product safety, toy safety

Background

Ed Mierzwinski has been a consumer advocate in the Washington, D.C.-based federal lobbying office of the National Association of State Public Interest Research Groups (U.S. PIRG) since 1989. State PIRGs are non-profit, non-partisan consumer, environmental and good government watchdog groups with over 500,000 members around the United States.

He often testifies before both Congress and state legislatures and has authored or co-authored numerous major reports on a wide range of consumer issues including cable television rates, telecommunications reform, banking, financial services and identity theft and product safety issues including toy and playground safety. He often speaks before conferences and associations, especially against the growing threat of federal preemption of stronger state consumer and health and safety laws. He comments on these and a variety of other important consumer issues in his blog: www.uspirg.org/consumer.

Mr. Mierzwinski is often quoted in the national press, has been a guest on numerous shows including NBC Today, ABC Good Morning America, ABC Nightline, CNN Crossfire and NPR Talk of the Nation, and has been profiled in the New York Times.

He is a 2003 recipient of Privacy International’s “Brandeis Award” for privacy protection efforts and a 2006 recipient of the Consumer Federation of America’s “Esther Peterson Consumer Service Award.”

He is a founding member of the Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue and represents U.S. PIRG on the TACD Steering Committee. He edited the 1993 edition of AARP's "Your Credit," a guidebook focused on the credit needs of older women. From 1993-95, he served on the Federal Reserve Board’s Consumer Advisory Council. He is a past member of the boards of two large consumer-owned cooperative businesses, Northeast Co-ops, a food wholesaler, and the University of Connecticut Bookstore Co-op. From 1981 through 1988, he was Executive Director of Connecticut PIRG, where he helped pass the nation’s first new car lemon law. Mr. Mierzwinski is a gradudate of the University of Connecticut (BA, MS).