Jerome H. Powell (L’79): Chairman of the Federal Reserve System’s Board of Governors

February 5, 2018

Jerome H. Powell (L’79) was sworn in as chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on Monday, February 5.

Jerome H. Powell (L’79) was sworn in as chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on Monday, February 5.

Powell was nominated by President Donald J. Trump on November 1 and confirmed by the Senate on January 23. He will serve as chair for a term of four years.

A member of Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors since 2012, Powell previously served as an Assistant Secretary and Under Secretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance in the George H.W. Bush administration.

Prior to joining the Administration, he worked as a lawyer and investment banker in New York. He has served as a visiting scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, D.C., focusing on federal and state fiscal issues. From 1997 through 2005, Powell was a partner at The Carlyle Group.

In addition to service on corporate boards, Powell has served on the boards of charitable and educational institutions, including the Bendheim Center for Finance at Princeton University and The Nature Conservancy of Washington, D.C., and Maryland.

Powell earned his B.A. from Princeton University in 1973 and his law degree from Georgetown in 1979, serving as the editor-in-chief of the Georgetown Law Journal. After law school, he clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.