Updated: February 2023

Ken McEldowney

Senior Fellow

Ken McEldowney is Senior Follow of Consumer Action, a San Francisco-based national consumer advocacy and education membership organization. Consumer Action has worked on food, insurance, utility, privacy, toxics, health care, banking, postal and telephone issues for 35 years. The organization's current focus is on ensuring that the interests of low income and limited English-speaking consumers are protected during this period of deregulation and corporate mergers.

CA's National Consumer Resource Center yearly distributes more than two million fact sheets in up to eight languages through a national network of 8,300 community organizations and social service organizations. An additional 500,000 people access its multilingual web site each year. Along with other key staff members, Ken McEldowney represents the consumer interest before state and federal regulatory bodies, Congress and the California Legislature.

At Consumer Action, he has directed contracts with the FTC, FDA, Federal Reserve, DOT, CPUC and HUD.

Prior to coming to Consumer Action McEldowney was consumer editor for a weekly newspaper. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan, with a BA in Political Science and graduate work in economics.

McEldowney is quoted widely on telephone, utility, health care, insurance, privacy, and banking issues and has been asked to speak on a variety of con-sumer related topics at conferences throughout the country. Major corporations seek his advice on a wide range of consumer issues and concerns.

McEldowney is immediate past president of the Consumer Federation of America (CFA)—a federation of nearly 300 pro-consumer organizations with more than 50 million individual members. He now serves as CFA's vice president.

Among his other responsibilities, he sits on the California Public Utilities Commission's Universal Lifeline Telephone Service Trust Administrative Committee and the California Department of Insurance's CAARP Advisory Committee and is Secretary of the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud. Previously, he chaired the Consumer Subcommittee of the FCC Consumer/Disability Telecommunications Advisory Committee. In addition, McEldowney serves on the Consumer Literacy Consortium Board.