Lael Brainard

Brainard has been serving as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System since 2014. Brainard serves as Chair of the Committee on Financial Stability, the Committee on Federal Reserve Bank Affairs, the Committee on Consumer and Community Affairs, the Committee on Payments, Clearing and Settlements, and the Subcommittee on Smaller Regional and Community Banking Organizations.

Brainard was nominated to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in January 2014. She was confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 61-31 on June 12, 2014, and began her term on June 16, 2014.

Brainard managed the Office of International Affairs at the Treasury Department with responsibilities including the euro area crisis and currency relations with China. During this time, she was the U.S. Representative to the G-20 Finance Deputies and G-7 Deputies and was a member of the Financial Stability Board. She received the Alexander Hamilton Award for her service. She left her post in the US Treasury in November 2013.

Brainard is co‑editor of Too Poor For Peace? (2007); co-editor of Offshoring White Collar Work (2006); editor of Transforming the Development Landscape: the Role of the Private Sector (2006) and Security by Other Means: Foreign Assistance, Global Poverty and American Leadership (2006); and coauthor of The Other War: Global Poverty and the Millennium Challenge Corporation (2004).

On March 23, 2009, President Obama nominated Brainard to serve as Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs, to replace David H. McCormick, whose term had ended with the end of the Bush administration. Reuters News Service reported on December 23, 2009, that the Senate Finance Committee had approved Brainard to become the "Treasury Department's top global diplomat, a job that would give her a key role in the bid to push China toward a flexible currency". The Senate confirmed her in a 78-19 vote on April 20, 2010.

Brainard served as Deputy National Economic Adviser and Chair of the Deputy Secretaries Committee on International Economics during the Clinton administration. As Deputy Director of the National Economic Council, she helped build a new White House organization to address global economic challenges such as the Asian financial crisis and China's accession to the World Trade Organization. As the U.S. Sherpa to the G8, she helped shape the 2000 G8 summit that, for the first time, included leaders of the poorest nations and laid the foundations for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Brainard served as Assistant and Associate Professor of Applied Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management from 1990 to 1996 where her publications made important contributions on the relationship between offshore production, trade, and jobs; the measurement of structural and cyclical unemployment in the U.S. economy; and strategic trade policy. Brainard has also worked at McKinsey & Company advising corporate clients on strategic challenges and she has also worked on microenterprise in West Africa.

Brainard grew up as an expatriate in Communist Poland and Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall. She attended George School for her secondary education and graduated in 1979. She then graduated with university honors from Wesleyan University with a bachelor of arts degree from the College of Social Studies. Brainard received masters and doctoral degrees in economics from Harvard University, where she was a National Science Foundation Fellow. She is the recipient of a White House Fellowship and a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship, a Marshall Scholar elect, and a member of the Wesleyan University Board of Trustees, Council on Foreign Relations, and Aspen Strategy Group.

Lael Brainard (born January 1, 1962) is an American economist and member of the U.S. Federal Reserve's Board of Governors, where she serves as Chair of the Committees on Financial Stability, Federal Reserve Bank Affairs, Consumer and Community Affairs, and Payments, Clearing and Settlements. She previously served as the United States Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs in the administration of President Barack Obama and as Counselor to the Secretary of the Treasury from 2009 to 2013 where she received the Alexander Hamilton Award for her service. She was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution from 2001 to 2009 and Vice President and Director of the Global Economy and Development Program from 2006 to 2009. She served as Deputy National Economic Adviser and Deputy Assistant to the President in the administration of President Bill Clinton. She previously was a member of the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management and worked at McKinsey and Company.