Harry Lloyd Hopkins, the 8th Secretary of Commerce of the United States, functioned as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's closest advisor on foreign policy during World War II. He became one of the architects of the 1930s New Deal, especially of the relief programs of the Works Progress Administration, which he directed and built into the largest employer in the country. During World War II he was Roosevelt's chief diplomatic troubleshooter and liaison with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin. He supervised the $50 billion Lend-Lease program of military aid to the Allies.
Born in Iowa, Hopkins settled in New York City after he graduated from Grinnell College. He accepted a position in New York City's Bureau of Child Welfare and worked for various social-work and public-health organizations. He was elected president of the National Association of Social Workers in 1923. In 1931 Jesse I. Straus hired Hopkins as the executive director of New York's Temporary Emergency Relief Administration.