Ben S. Bernanke

Former Chairman of the Board of Governors of the United States Federal Reserve System

Ben S. Bernanke served as the Chairman of the Board of Governors of the United States Federal Reserve System for two terms from 2006-2014 and is currently a member of the board. During his tenure as chairman, Bernanke monitored the Federal Reserve’s response to the financial crisis from 2006to 2010 and the Great Recession. He implemented a billion dollar stimulus package to stimulate economic growth and has also been credited with enhancing the Federal Reserve’s transparency.

Bernanke received his Bachelor’s degree in Economics summa cum laude from Harvard University in 1975 and his Doctorate in Economics in 1979 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was an assistant professor of economics at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University from 1979 to 1983, and was promoted to associate professor from 1983-1985. In 1985,Bernanke became a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University. From 1994-1996, Bernanke was the Class of 1926 Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at the university and became the Howard Harrison and Gabrielle Snyder Beck Professor of Economics and Public Affairs and Chair of the Economics Department at the university from 1996-2002.Bernanke also served as a visiting professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1989-1990 and at New York University in 1993.

Bernanke became a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from 2002-2005, but previously had been a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Banks of Philadelphia (1987-89), Boston (1989-90), and New York (1990-91, 1994-96); and a member of the Academic Advisory Panel at the New York Fed from 1990-2002. Before his appointment as the Chair of the Board of Governors, Bernanke served as the Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors from June 2005 to January 2006.

Over the course of his career, Bernanke has published a number of articles on a wide variety of economic issues and is the author of numerous scholarly books and two textbooks. He has held a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Sloan Fellowship, and he is a fellow of the Econometric Society and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2009, Bernanke was named TIME Magazine Person of the Year. Bernanke served as the Director of the Monetary Economics Program of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and as a member of NBER’s Business Cycle Dating Committee.