Janani Ramachandran Yates

Managing Partner & Co-Founder

Janani has nearly 15 years of experience in federal, state, and local government, balancing budgets, driving efficient and modern financial processes, effectively steering teams through crisis and growth, and leveraging analytical capacity to increase performance and reduce costs.

Janani’s core experience in government has been as a decision architect – conducting or overseeing data-driven analyses to provide insight and options to senior executives with policymaking authority. Her leadership roles with the City of Detroit and District of Columbia centered on developing and presenting such analyses in support of a balanced annual budget and capital plan, including suites of individual decision points addressing all aspects of a financial challenge or budget gap.

As Deputy Budget Director for the City of Detroit, she comprehensively rebuilt the City’s budget decision-making apparatus, enabling a more transparent and evidence-based process. This work created a framework that, for the first time since the City’s 2013 bankruptcy, allowed for the strategic identification and allocation of resources based on policy priorities and evidence, dramatically improving budget transparency for elected officials and the public. As Associate Budget Director for the District of Columbia under Mayor Muriel Bowser, Janani led the strategic management of the District’s $10 billion capital infrastructure budget. During her tenure, she also helped direct the District's financial response to the Covid-19 pandemic, including the strategic allocation of CARES and ARPA federal aid packages totaling nearly $4 billion.

Janani spent her early career as a finance, policy, and budget analyst with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and Arlington County, VA, developing financial models to inform recommendations on a wide variety of management questions and challenges, including labor negotiations and capital planning. Her tenure at the CFPB included serving as the principal analyst in charge of formulating all personnel costs and developing long- term forecasting models for the then newly created federal agency.

She holds an MPP from the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan and a BA, cum laude, from Amherst College.

Education

  • Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan, MPP

  • Amherst College, BA, cum laude

Experience

  • City of Detroit, Office of the Chief Financial Officer, 2021-2024

  • District of Columbia, Office of the City Administrator, 2018-2021

  • Arlington County, Virginia, Department of Management and Finance, 2017-2018

  • Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 2012-2017

Recognitions

  • Mayor’s Excellence in Leadership Award for the financial stewardship of the District of Columbia during the unprecedented first phase of the Covid-19 pandemic.

  • Delegate to Local Government 2030, a national group of 50 under-40 local government leaders tasked by the National Academy of Public Administration with developing solutions to 10 Grand Challenges for the next decade in government. 

  • OMB Finance Fellow in a “rising stars” program for 20 twenty promising young professionals chosen from across the federal government.

  • Hacket Family Award, granted to one 2nd year Ford School graduate student for exceptional academic achievement

Volunteering and Boards

  • Alumni Board, Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan

  • Class Secretary, Amherst College