PHILADELPHIA – After an extensive search that kicked off last year, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia has named Chicago Fed economist Anna Paulson as its next president and CEO.
Paulson, 60, will succeed longtime leader and former University of Delaware president Patrick Harker on July 1.
“Anna Paulson’s economics and monetary policy expertise, as well as her leadership at the Chicago Fed and throughout the Federal Reserve System, make her the ideal person to serve as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia,” said Anthony Ibargüen, who chairs the Philadelphia Fed board of directors as well as the search committee.
For the past 20 years, Paulson has served as a top economist and research on financial stability and monetary policy. Her research has focused on financial market institutions, particularly the insurance industry. While at the Chicago Fed, she helped establish its insurance initiative, which takes a close look at regulations and the stability of the insurance industry.
At the time of the announcement, she serves as the executive vice president and director of research at the Chicago Fed. In that role, she has advised the institution’s current lead Austan Goolsbee and has attended Fed meetings.
Paulson holds a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago and was a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University.
As the next CEO of the Philadelphia Fed, Paulson will represent the third district, which includes eastern and central Pennsylvania, Delaware and southern New Jersey. Next year, she will also be a voting member on the Fed’s Open Market Committee (FOMC) which sets interest rates- at a time when the central bank is weighing how to respond to the White House’s trade policy.
“I am honored to serve as the next president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia,” Paulson said in a prepared statement. “I look forward to meeting people throughout the Third District and leading the Philadelphia Fed team who are deeply committed to fostering the stability, integrity, and efficiency of the nation’s monetary, financial, and payment systems. I am excited to become part of the community in the Third District.”
The announcement marks the end of Harker’s 10-year tenure at the Philadelphia Fed, where he served after he left UD in 2015. As the third district is one of the smallest in the Fed, Harker focused on studying workforce development matters and spearheaded the Fed’s look into the nation’s job market and skills gap.
An engineer before he turned scholar and higher education executive, Harker also took more moderate stances on monetary policy. His last economic forecast at the Lyons Companies event at the University of Delaware urged business leaders to stay the course when it came to battling sticky inflation and uncertainty over federal policy.
