Former Senior Fellows

Former Senior Fellows

M-RCBG reorganized its senior fellows program in 2011. Below is a listing of senior fellows appointed since that time. (Bios are current as of the time of the appointment.)

Ajmal Ahmady (senior fellow 2021-2023) 
Ajmal Ahmady is the former Afghan Central Bank Governor, Minister of Industry and Commerce, and Senior Economic Advisor to the President of Afghanistan.  During the past eight years, he played a key role in the economic affairs of the country.   As Central Bank Governor, he was responsible for the formulation and implementation of monetary policy, financial sector supervision, financial intelligence, and payment systems.  During his tenure, he was able to maintain macroeconomic stability, reform the financial supervisory framework, and introduce mobile money and electronic payment systems. As Minister of Industry and Commerce, he was able to increase exports and boost the industrial sector.  And as Senior Economic Advisor to the President of Afghanistan, he began an air corridor program that increased exports by more than $100 million per year, passed reforms that made Afghanistan the top-ranked World Bank Doing Business reformer in 2018, and helped draft numerous laws in the mineral, hydrocarbons, municipal, and other sectors. Prior to his work in the Afghan Government, he worked in a variety of positions in the asset management industry, including Fortress Investment Group, Acadian Asset Management, and T. Rowe Price.  He invested in emerging markets across multiple asset classes - including fixed income, rates, currencies, equities, and commodities.  He also briefly worked for a number of technology startup companies, including Earnest and Marketo, both of which were acquired.  Prior to graduate school, he worked in economic development at the World Bank, Afghan Ministry of Finance, U.S. Treasury, and Booz Allen Hamilton.  He received his MBA from Harvard Business School, an MPA/ID from the Harvard Kennedy School, and a B.S. in Mathematics/Economics with minors in Philosophy and Computer Science from U.C.L.A.   He has written for the Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, and been featured in CNN, New York Times, Bloomberg, and multiple other international publications. While an M-RCBG Senior Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School, Ajmal will work on identifying optimal central bank management practices in developing economies.  His faculty advisor is Karen Dynan, Professor of the Practice of Economics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University.

Esko Aho (senior fellow 2012-2014)
Esko Aho has enjoyed a distinguished career in the private sector and government service. Since 2008, he has led Nokia's government and public affairs function, overseeing the company's global policies and activities regarding sustainable development and social responsibility. He has been a member of the Nokia Leadership Team since 2009, stepping down from that role on August 31, 2012. He was prime minister of Finland from 1991 to 1995. He was elected to Parliament in 1983 and served on several key committees. He also served on the Nordic Council and the Finnish Delegation to the Council of Europe, is a former vice chairman of Liberal International, and was President of the Finnish Innovation Fund, SITRA, from 2004 to 2008. Currently, he is a member of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) World Council and vice chair of ICC Finland, as well as a board member of the Technology Academy Finland. He also serves as a board member of Terveystalo and is vice chairman of the board of Technology Industries of Finland. He holds a master's in social science from the University of Helsinki. As a senior fellow, Aho explores the changing role of the state in maintaining welfare and global competitiveness. His faculty sponsor is Steven Kelman, Albert J. Weatherhead III and Richard W. Weatherhead Professor of Public Management.

Marlene Amstad (senior fellow 2020-2022)
Marlene Amstad is economics and finance professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, the Co-Director of its Fintech Center at the Shenzhen Finance Institute and serves as Vice-Chair of the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA). As the former deputy director at the Swiss National Bank she headed the investment strategy and financial market analysis unit. Marlene also worked at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Credit Suisse and the Swiss Economic Institute. She served as adviser to over ten Asian central banks and coordinated the Asian Bond Fund (ABF) initiative of EMEAP (Executives' Meeting of East Asia-Pacific Central Banks). Marlene regularly holds research fellowships at central banks, most recently with the Bank of Japan, Bank of Finland and BIS and is a fellow at ABFER (Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research). Marlene’s research focuses on international finance and monetary economics. Her research is published in refereed and policy-oriented journals. She is the coeditor of “Central Bank Digital Currency and Fintech in Asia” with the Asian Development Bank (ADB) covering contributions by eight Asian central banks, IMF, BIS and Luohan Academy. Her latest book is “The Handbook of China’s Financial System” including banking, bonds, the stock market, asset management, the pension system, and financial technology (forthcoming Nov 2020, in Princeton Press). Marlene is an expert in developing new economic indicators based on big data for policy makers and investors. Working at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, she created the “Fed New York staff underlying inflation gauge (UIG)” which is published monthly. She built a quantitative credit rating system for corporate clients at Credit Suisse, and at Swiss Economic Institute a recession indicator based on company surveys. As a Senior Fellow at M-RCBG, her research will be on data innovation and financial regulation. Her faculty sponsor is Ken Rogoff, Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Economics at Harvard University.

Ignazio Angeloni (senior fellow 2019-20)
Ignazio Angeloni was born in Milano and graduated from Bocconi University with a thesis in monetary economics supervised by Mario Monti. In 1985 he earned a PhD in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania with a thesis in monetary economics and econometrics supervised by Albert K. Ando. In the 1980s and 1990s he held several positions in the Banca d’Italia’s Research Department. In 1995 he was appointed Director of the Monetary and Financial Sector. In 1998 he joined the European Central Bank (ECB) as Deputy Director General of Research. In that position he launched and led several research initiatives, including the Eurosystem Monetary Transmission Network and the Eurosystem Inflation Persistence Network. In 2005 he joined Italy’s Ministry of Economy and Finance as Director for International Financial Affairs. In that role he also acted as G20 Finance Deputy; Deputy Governor for Italy in the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the Asian Development Bank and the African Development Bank; Chairman of the Board of SACE (Italy’s export-credit insurance agency); member of the Board of the European Investment Bank and of MTS SpA (screen-based government bond market); member of the Working Party 3 of OECD; member of the Bellagio group. In 2008 he re-joined the ECB as Advisor to the Executive Board, then Director General for Macro-Prudential Policy and Financial Stability. In this position he coordinated the ECB preparation for the banking union and the single supervisory mechanism. In March 2014 he was appointed member of the ECB Supervisory Board with a 5-year mandate. A former Fellow of Bruegel, Ignazio held teaching positions at the University of Pennsylvania, Bocconi and LUISS (Rome). He published books and articles in top US and European academic refereed journals. In April 2019 he was appointed Senior Fellow of SAFE (Sustainable Architecture for Finance in Europe) at Goethe University in Frankfurt for the 2019-20 academic year. Ignazio is married to Ester Faia and they have four children: Ferdinando, Vittoria, Sebastiano and Giorgia. As a senior fellow, his research will be on Credit Policies for the Heartlands. His faculty sponsor is Jeffrey Frankel, James W. Harpel Professor of Capital Formation and Growth, Harvard Kennedy School.

Barbara Anthony (senior fellow 2015-2016)
Barbara Anthony served as Massachusetts Undersecretary of the Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation from 2009 to 2015 where she oversaw five state regulatory agencies. Among her accomplishments, Anthony oversaw implementation of the state’s Data Security Law and regulations, helped slow health insurance rate increases, helped implement the state’s 2012 Health Care Cost Containment Law, and oversaw efforts to reform the mortgage foreclosure process. She also spearheaded a campaign to empower Massachusetts healthcare consumers through price and quality transparency. Previously, Anthony was Executive Director of Health Law Advocates, the Boston-based non-profit law firm dedicated to health care access; Regional Director of the Northeast Regional Office of the Federal Trade Commission; Chief of the Public Protection Bureau of the MA Attorney General’s Office; and Vice President and Chief Compliance Officer for BayBanks, Inc. Anthony began her legal career as a Trial Attorney in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. She is a graduate of Suffolk University Law School, where she currently teaches a course in Consumer Law and Business Regulation. She holds an MA in economics and a BS in business administration degrees from Northeastern University. She serves on the board of trustees of the Cambridge Health Alliance, Cambridge Community Cable Television, the state Treasurer’s Financial Literacy Trust Fund Board and the Advisory Board of the Rappaport Center for Law and Public Policy at Boston College Law School. She is a Senior Fellow in Healthcare at the Pioneer Institute in Boston where she focuses on transparency in healthcare. As a senior fellow at M-RCBG, Anthony is researching and writing about Massachusetts healthcare cost containment efforts. Her faculty sponsor is Joseph Newhouse, John D. MacArthur Professor of Health Policy and Management.

Rabah Arezki (senior fellow 2017-2019)
Rabah Arezki is the Chief Economist for Middle East and North Africa Region (MNA) at the World Bank and a non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution and an external research associate at the University of Oxford. He received his MS in statistics and economics from the Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l’Administration Economique in Paris and PhD. in economics from European University Institute, Florence. He has written on energy, commodities, international macroeconomics, and development economics. He has published widely in academic journals including the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Economic Journal, the Journal of International Economics, the Journal of Development Economics, the European Economic Review, Economic Policy, the Journal of International Money and Finance, the World Bank Economic Review, and the American Journal of Agricultural Economics. He is the Editor of the IMF Research Bulletin and an Associate Editor of the Revue d'économie du développement. He has co-edited special issues of academic journals including of the Journal of Money Credit and Banking, the Journal of International Money and Finance, and Oxford Economics Papers. He is the co-author, and co-editor of several books including Beyond the Curse: Policies to Harness the Power of Natural Resources, Commodity Price Volatility and Inclusive Growth in Low-Income Countries, Shifting Commodities Markets in a Globalized World, and Energy Transition and the Post-COP21 Agenda. Many of his research papers have been cited extensively in academic circles and in prominent media outlets such as the Economist, the Financial Times, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Project Syndicate, and the Washington Post. His blog posts, including on the recent oil price collapse and its global economic consequences, have been viewed over hundred thousand times and have been listed as the most read IMF blog posts three years in a row. He is also a frequent contributor to Finance and Development magazine and VoxEU. As a Senior Fellow, his research is entitled The Economics of Sustainability: Causes and Consequences of Energy Market Transformation. His faculty sponsor is William Hogan, Raymond Plank Professor of Global Energy Policy at Harvard Kennedy School.

Ole Gunnar Austvik (senior fellow 2015-2016)
Ole Gunnar Austvik is professor at BI Norwegian Business School and the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI). He is on leave from and adjuncted lecturer at Lillehammer University College (HiL) where he for many years was professor and provost/head of research. He has previously also worked with Statistics Norway (SSB). Austvik holds a doctorate in political science and a master in economics (cand.oecon) from University of Oslo. He also holds an MPA from Harvard Kennedy School. He has written numerous articles and books on international economics and political economy, the interaction between national and international policy making, business and government relationships, the European Union, oil and natural gas markets, the geopolitics of oil and gas, petroleum economics, energy security, Norwegian oil and gas policy, innovation, and political entrepreneurship. As a senior fellow, he will explore the fields of international political economy, energy economics, and European integration. His faculty sponsor is William Hogan, Raymond Plank Professor of Global Energy Policy and Harvard Electricity Policy Group (HEPG) Research Director. Web:www.oga.no.

Todd H. Baker (senior fellow 2016-2018)
Todd Baker is a nationally recognized authority on financial services strategy and the development of innovative solutions to the financial challenges of low-income working Americans. After a career spent driving strategic change in large banking organizations and leading high-profile M&A and capital-raising transactions, Mr. Baker has focused his research at M-RCBG on the financial volatility challenges facing low-income working Americans and the emergence of superior, scalable alternatives to payday loans and other high-cost borrowings through innovative financial technology. Mr. Baker is currently the Managing Principal of Broadmoor Consulting LLC, a financial services consulting firm. Before founding Broadmoor, Mr. Baker was the Managing Director and Head of Americas Corporate Development for MUFG Americas Holdings, the Americas banking operations of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), the Executive Vice President of Corporate Strategy & Development for Union Bank NA, the U.S. commercial banking operation of MUFG, the Executive Director of Corporate Development for TD Bank, N.A. (where he was a member of the Managing Committee), and the Executive Vice President of Corporate Strategy & Development at Washington Mutual, Inc. (where he served on the Executive Committee.) In his banking career he managed, at various times, functions including strategic analysis, acquisitions & divestitures, strategic planning, investor relations, performance management, venture investing and competitive intelligence. Prior to his executive roles, Baker was a partner with the international law firms Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and Morrison & Foerster LLP, where he represented bank, non-bank financial services, technology, corporate and investment banking clients in corporate and board governance matters, mergers and acquisitions, public and private securities offerings, securitizations and compliance issues. As a Senior Fellow at M-RCBG, Baker will work with faculty sponsor Howell E. Jackson, James S. Reid, Jr. Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.

Ed Balls (senior fellow 2015-2017)
Ed Balls was UK Shadow Chancellor from 2011 to 2015 and co-chaired the Inclusive Prosperity Commission with former US Treasury Secretary, Larry Summers, which reported in January 2015. He served in the British Cabinet as Education Secretary (2007-2010). He was previously the UK Minister for Financial Services (2006-2007) and the Chief Economic Adviser to the UK Treasury (1997-2004), during which time he was the Chair of the IMFC Deputies and UK G20 Deputy. He was the Labour & Co-operative Member of Parliament for Morley and Outwood (2010-2015) and MP for Normanton (2005-2010). As Chief Economic Adviser to the Treasury (1997-2004), Balls led the design of policies including independence of the Bank of England, the New Deal jobs programme, the Five Tests Euro assessment, Sure Start, tax credits, and the national minimum wage. As a Treasury Minister, he was commissioned by the G7 Finance Ministers to prepare a report with Sir Jon Cunliffe (now deputy Governor of the Bank of England) on Economic Aspects of the Israel-Palestine conflict. At the Department for Children, Schools and Families, Balls brought together schools and children's policy for the first time in the Children's Plan. He pushed through radical and progressive policies including raising the education and training age to 18, reform of the social work profession, establishing the support staff negotiating body and extra investment in youth services and short breaks for disabled children and their families. As Shadow Chancellor, he was awarded the Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year and the Political Studies Association Politician of the Year. Balls received his MPA from HKS in 1990, was a teaching fellow in Harvard’s Department of Economics (1989-90), and was a leader writer and columnist at the Financial Times (1990-94) where he was the WINCOTT Young Financial Journalist of the Year. He has also written regularly for the Guardian, New Statesman and Tribune and co-authored a number of books, papers, articles, and pamphlets. His faculty sponsor is Lawrence Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor of Harvard University and Director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government.

Nkiru Balonwu (senior fellow 2022-2023) 
Nkiru Balonwu is Founder of The Africa Soft Power Group, which includes the Africa Soft Power Project (ASP), ASP Global, and African Women on Board (AWB). She founded the group having recognised the need to incorporate vital - and all too often still unseen - African perspectives into the global conversation; an important mission not only for Africa itself, but the global economy at large, particularly at a time when a host of intersectional issues threaten future (and present) growth. Over the past years, these organisations have worked tirelessly to put modern African discourse on the world map, creating and convening Africa’s highest level gathering of the continent’s creative and cultural industries, advancing new and bold narratives about African women’s leadership and taking African soft power to important global events, including the UN General Assembly, Davos and US-Africa Leaders Summit. Nkiru consults with some of the world’s leading organisations on designing an effective Africa strategy. Prior to her work with ASP Group, Nkiru was CEO for Spinlet, which at the time was Africa’s largest music streaming app with 2m+ subscribers, and has also served as the inaugural Lecturer of Gender & Law at the University of Lagos. She holds a Doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley; Masters from University College London; a Law Degree from the University of Manchester, and has been called to the bar in England, Nigeria and New York. In 2019, her work as an innovator and change-maker saw her receive the 2020 Powerlist International Award and in 2022, she was named amongst New African magazine’s Top 100 Most Influential Africans. Nkiru is currently a Senior Fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School, where she is focused on the role of the private sector in influencing and constructing gender policy. Her faculty sponsor is Iris Bohnet, Co-Director, Women and Public Policy Program and Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government. 

Richard J. Balzer (senior fellow 2012-2014)
Richard J. Balzer has worked globally as an organizational consultant focused on leadership, strategy, and organizational change for over thirty years. He has served as a coach and advisor to chief executives and board chairmen. His clients have included British Petroleum, Standard Chartered Bank, Goldman Sachs, NBC, and the NBA. Balzer has also worked with a number of unions including the United Auto Workers, the United Steelworkers, the International Machinist Union, and the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers promoting joint labor-management efforts. A writer and photographer, he is the author of five books including Clockwork: Life In and Outside An American Factory, Next Door Down the Road and Around the Corner, and China Day By Day. He currently serves as the chairman of the Petra Foundation, an independent organization that identifies and awards grants to community-based leaders who work to address human rights and social justice issues throughout the United States. He is a graduate of Cornell University and Yale Law School. As a senior fellow, he is studying the leadership skills required to steward major multi-nationals. His faculty sponsor is Max Bazerman, Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration.

Jo Ann Barefoot (senior fellow 2015-2017)
Jo Ann Barefoot has worked for over thirty-five years in private and public sector roles focused on consumer financial protection, inclusion, and technology. As Deputy Comptroller of the Currency she established the first federal consumer protection oversight function for national banks. She has served on the staff of the U. S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs; was Co-chair of Treliant Risk Advisors; and was Partner and Managing Director at KPMG, leading the firm’s privacy practice and a nationwide consumer finance consulting group. Barefoot has advised all of America’s largest financial institutions, many other financial companies, various federal agencies, and numerous community banks and non-profits. She serves on the Consumer Advisory Board to the new federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; is a member of the board of the Center for Financial Services Innovation; and serves on advisory boards to several fintech startups. She produces the podcast interview series Barefoot Innovation, speaks annually to thousands of people, has authored four books on bank regulatory matters and has published nearly 200 articles. She was the primary author of Common Ground -- Increasing Consumer Benefits and Reducing Costs in Bank Regulation, published by the University of Wisconsin. She was an International Visitor to the European Community and has worked in rural India with micro-finance and education in leprosy communities. Jo Ann Barefoot is CEO of Jo Ann Barefoot Group, LLC. Barefoot’s research project is entitled, “Regulation Innovation – Protecting Consumers through Technology and Trust,” and her faculty sponsor is Brigitte Madrian, Aetna Professor of Public Policy and Corporate Management.

Binta Niambi Brown (senior fellow 2013-2015)
Binta Niambi Brown is a corporate lawyer who advises early stage technology, media and entertainment companies, a startup advisor, human rights advocate, nascent angel investor, and bass player. After working for a technology start-up, she worked exclusively on technology and internet IPOs and transactions as an Associate at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP. She also advised (and advises) senior management and corporate boards of media, technology, telecom, and entertainment companies on corporate governance matters and special situations, and was most recently a Partner in Kirkland & Ellis LLP, before leaving to become an M-RCBG Senior Fellow. In addition, Brown continues to advise several different early-stage, pre-seed technology companies (on a strictly pro bono basis). Brown has also informally advised Hillary Clinton, Andrew Cuomo, and members of the Obama Administration on a variety of policy matters. She has guest lectured at Dartmouth College, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Muenster (in Muenster, Germany). Brown has been recognized as one of the Root's 100 Most Influential African-Americans, Fortune Magazine's 40 under 40 business leaders, Crain's New York 40 under 40, and by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader. She has been featured in Real Simple magazine on mentorship, the Washington Post, the New York Times, FastCompany.com, on CNN, and an Intelligence Squared debate featured on National Public Radio (her side won). She is a member of the Board of Directors of Technical Career Institutes, Inc., (a for-profit company), is a member of the Board of Advisors of the education technology company 2U, Inc., a Trustee of each of Barnard College, the American Theatre Wing, and New York City Parks Foundation, and on the Board of Directors of Human Rights First. She is a member of the New York Philharmonic Education Committee, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Clinton Global Initiative. She is an Advisor to Apploud, Inc., and the African Technology Foundation. Her research interests at M-RCBG include the changing nature of market capitalism, barriers to emerging business models, and the intersection of business and human rights. Her faculty sponsor is Dick Cavanagh, Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy.

Edoardo Campanella (senior fellow 2021-2023) 
Edoardo Campanella is an economist and author. He works as senior global economist at UniCredit Bank and he recently published with Marta Dassu’ Anglo Nostalgia: the Politics of Emotion in a Fractured West (Oxford University Press). He writes globally syndicated columns for Project Syndicate, and his writings have appeared, among the others, in Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, Survival and many other media outlets. Edoardo is also David Rockefeller Fellow of the Trilateral Commission, where he is co-directing the Taskforce on Global Capitalism in Transition — co-chaired by Carl Bildt (former Swedish PM), Kelly Grier (US Chair and Americas Managing Partner, Ernest & Young) and Takeshi Ninami (CEO of Suntory Group). He previously worked for the economic research departments of the World Trade Organisation, the World Economic Forum and the Italian Senate. In 2016, he was a shortlisted author for the Bracken Bower Prize, awarded by the Financial Times and McKinsey to promising writers under the age of 35. He holds an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School that he attended on a Fulbright scholarship. While at Harvard, he was awarded the Certificate for Teaching Excellence for his teaching activity. He is also affiliated with ISPI, the Aspen Institute, the Centre for the Governance of Change of IE University in Madrid and the Council for Italy and the United States. During his M-RCBG senior fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School, Edoardo will work on the future of capitalism, studying, in particular, how three macro trends — the green transition, the digital revolution and rising inequalities — will affect the balance between the market and the state (project title: Reconceiving Capitalism in a Post-Pandemic World: Towards a New Global Order). His study will go beyond a monolithic view of capitalism, focusing on how different types of capitalism react to the same mega trends. His faculty sponsor is Robert Lawrence, Albert L. Williams Professor of International Trade and Investment, Harvard Kennedy School.

George Chouliarakis (senior fellow 2020-2022)
George Chouliarakis was the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers of Greece from February 2015 to July 2019 and the Alternate Minister of Finance of Greece - responsible for fiscal policy, the government budget, medium-term fiscal strategy, and public debt – from August 2015 to July 2019. From May to August 2015 he served as head of the technical negotiations for Greece that led to the Third Economic Adjustment Programme, an agreement that prevented Greece’s disorderly exit from the European Monetary Union. He subsequently served as interim Finance Minister in the run up to the elections of September 2015. Since then and until the parliamentary elections of July 7th, 2019, he had a pivotal role in guiding the economy through one of the most challenging times in its modern history. He oversaw the design and successful implementation of the fiscal consolidation program 2015-2018, which restored fiscal policy credibility and enabled Greece to regain market access. He also conducted the technical negotiations for Greece that led to the vital debt relief agreement of June 2018. He served as a member of the Eurogroup Working Group (EWG), an alternate member of the Eurogroup, a member of the Board of Directors of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), and a member of the Economic Policy Committee of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Prior to assuming his policy-making duties, he taught macroeconomics, international economics and economic history as a tenured faculty member of the University of Manchester and, previously, of the University of Essex. He holds a BSc in Economics from the University of Athens, an MSc in Economics from the University of London and a PhD in Economics from the University of Warwick. As a Senior Fellow, his research will focus on the role of fiscal policy in coping with future large shocks (project title: Preparing for future shocks: lessons from the global financial crisis for fiscal policy and the EMU). His faculty sponsor is Jason Furman, Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy at Harvard Kennedy School.

Tim Christian (senior fellow 2011-2013)
Tim Christian is Professor of Medicine (Cardiology) at the University of Vermont (UVM) and senior fellow at the center exploring the intersection of medicine, business, and government. He is currently involved in research that explores new approaches to medical fee structures, incentives, and insurance reimbursement strategies. He was a cardiologist and Professor of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic for many years before joining the faculty at UVM. He has published extensively in all aspects of medicine, ranging from basic science to clinical trials to editorials. He is a long-time teacher and clinician in addition to his career in research. Dr. Christian received his MPA at Harvard Kennedy School in 2011 where he focused on the global economics of health care. He received his medical degree from the Albany Medical College and undergraduate degree from Boston College.

Gerhard Clemenz (senior fellow 2011-2012)
Gerhard Clemenz is professor of economics at the University of Vienna, where he served as chairman of the senate from 2003-2009. As a senior fellow, his research will examine network externalities, multi-sided platforms, and competition policy. Previous positions include professorships at the University of Regensburg and at the Free University Berlin as well as a policy role at the Austrian Ministry of Finance. He has published widely in the areas of international trade, environmental economics, and industrial economics. In recent years his research has focused mainly on the economics of competition. He was a member of the Economic Advisory Group on Competition Policy at the DG Competition of the European Union in Brussels and is frequently involved in proceedings of the Austrian Cartel-Court. He received his PhD in economics from the University of Vienna.

Brian Deese (senior fellow 2017)
Brian Deese is a nationally-recognized economic and clean energy expert, who has worked at the center of several historic undertakings, from restructuring the American auto industry to driving the U.S.’s successful effort to combat climate change and secure the Paris Climate Agreement. Most recently, Mr. Deese served as Senior Advisor to President Barack Obama with responsibility for executing the Obama Administration’s energy, climate and conservation strategies, and advising the President on a range of domestic and international issues. Mr. Deese played a central role in negotiating the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement and directing the United States’s engagement with China, India, and other major economies on climate issues. Mr. Deese also oversaw the Administration’s domestic energy and climate policies including investments in clean energy, and land and water conservation. Previously, in his role as Acting Director and Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Deese managed the creation of the U.S. Federal Budget and drove reforms to improve the efficacy of government programs and services. He helped lead the White House’s work with Congress to craft the first full, bipartisan omnibus Budget in more than twenty years, and was the principal negotiator of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 which replaced sequestration with a more sustainable framework for defense and nondefense discretionary spending. From 2009 to 2013, Mr. Deese held a number of roles, including Deputy Director, with the National Economic Council that saw him coordinate policy development on economic issues including financial regulation, housing, energy, and manufacturing. In 2009, Mr. Deese was a senior member of the team that led the restructuring of General Motors and Chrysler. Deese helped negotiate with company management, investors, and other industry stakeholders to reach a successful resolution that laid the groundwork for the resurgence of the American automotive industry.Before serving in government, Mr. Deese was a policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, where his work centered on fiscal policy, international trade, and globalization. In 2002, Mr. Deese helped to found the Center for Global Development, where he co-wrote its first major publication, Delivering on Debt Relief and published articles on U.S. foreign assistance, international AIDS policy and economic reform in developing countries. Mr. Deese received a J.D. from Yale Law School, and received his B.A., summa cum laude, from Middlebury College. As a Senior Fellow, his faculty sponsor is Lawrence Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor of Harvard University.

John DeVillars (senior fellow 2015-2017)
John DeVillars is a clean energy and environmental professional with substantial leadership experience in both the public and private sectors. He is currently Chairman of BlueWave Capital LLC, a solar energy development and investment firm with $200M in utility-scale assets in North America, the Caribbean, and South Africa and a residential solar loan program offered in selected markets in the United States. Mr. DeVillars has held several executive positions in the public sector including New England Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Massachusetts Secretary of Environmental Affairs, Chief of Operations to the Governor of Massachusetts, and Chairman of the Board of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority. At E.P.A. Mr. DeVillars launched a number of nationally-recognized initiatives including the establishment of the nation’s first regional Center for Environmental Industry and Technology; the Urban Environment Initiative which targeted EPA resources to address inner city health and environmental challenges; and the Clean Charles Initiative, a multi-stakeholder effort which has led to the Charles River reaching swimmable water quality standards. As the Commonwealth’s Environmental Secretary, he directed 3,500 employees and the $400 MM operating and capital budgets of five regulatory and natural resource agencies and pioneered advances in pollution prevention, air quality, wildlife protection, and market-‐based approaches to financing and regulating environmental activities. As Chairman of the MWRA Board of Directors, Mr. DeVillars was deeply involved in the six-‐billion-‐dollar cleanup of Boston Harbor, at the time the largest public works project in New England’s history. Mr. DeVillars has won numerous awards for his public service including the Nature Conservancy’s President’s Award for national environmental leadership. He serves as a member of the Board of Directors of several private companies and non-profit organizations including the E.P.A.’s National Advisory Council on Environmental Policy and Technology. Mr. DeVillars is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (B.A.) and Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government (M.P.A.) As a senior fellow at the Center, he will focus on the role of public utilities in meeting the climate change challenge. His faculty sponsor is Professor William Hogan, Raymond Plank Professor of Global Energy Policy and the Harvard Electricity Policy Group (HEPG) Research Director.

Raymond Fisher (senior fellow 2015-2016)
Raymond Fisher recently received his MPA from Harvard Kennedy School and was previously a finance lawyer for 23 years, specializing in securities law. His research focus at M-RCBG will be the regulation of non-bank financial institutions. Fisher graduated from Harvard College in 1985. He spent a year in Cairo, Egypt as a Presidential Intern at the American University of Cairo before enrolling at New York University School of Law. He received his JD from NYU in 1990 and his MA in politics from NYU in 1991. His 2015 MPA from HKS was essentially a master’s degree in economics, with substantial work in macroeconomics, microeconomics, statistical analysis and financial regulation. His legal career encompassed transactions for companies in North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, India and East Asia, representing both companies that were raising funds and the banks who were arranging the transactions. He was a partner at three multinational law firms with considerable finance expertise: Milbank Tweed in New York (focusing especially on Latin America), Linklaters in Frankfurt, New York and São Paulo and Ashurst in London. His legal career gave him considerable exposure to financial regulation in a variety of jurisdictions, including the United States, the United Kingdom, numerous other European countries (especially Germany and Spain) and Latin America (especially Brazil). Non-bank financial institutions account for the majority of assets in our financial system. During his time as a senior fellow, Fisher will explore approaches to regulation of these institutions that promote efficiency and are minimally intrusive while enhancing economic stability and consumer protection. His faculty advisor is Robert Glauber, Adjunct Lecturer of Public Policy.

John Fiske (senior fellow 2022-23)
John Fiske is Director of Data Protection at Meta, where he works on a wide range of privacy-related issues, such as fairness, transparency, adequacy of controls, governance and accountability, etc.  He has spent his career in the technology sector, in a range of product management, consultative, operational and general management roles.  Prior to joining Meta, John was a VP at SAP, focused on data management products, and served as COO for a global business unit.  He has also worked for various telecom service providers (Comcast, Cable & Wireless, AOL) and consultancies (Gemini Consulting, CEB/Gartner).  He has an A.B from Harvard in Sanskrit & Indian Studies and an MBA from INSEAD.  He lives with his family in Arlington, Virginia. While an M-RCBG Senior Fellow, John will explore the tensions between online anonymity and identity authentication.  He will be working on a framework for ‘fair identification’, which attempts to balance protections of online anonymity with privacy-protective identity authentication. John Fiske’s faculty sponsor is John Haigh, Co-Director, Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, and Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Justin Fox (senior fellow 2012-2014)
Justin Fox is editorial director of the Harvard Business Review Group and the author of The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street. He also writes a blog for hbr.org and is a contributor to Time magazine. Before joining HBR Group in 2010, he wrote a weekly column for Time and created the Curious Capitalist blog for Time.com. Previously, Fox spent more than a decade working as a writer and editor at Fortune magazine, where he covered economics, finance, and international business. As a senior fellow, he conducts research for a new project on the art and science of prediction. His faculty sponsor is Richard Zeckhauser, Frank Plumpton Ramsey Professor of Political Economy.

Connie M. Friesen (senior fellow 2021-2023) 
Connie M. Friesen was a partner in the Banking and Financial Services Group at the global law firm of Sidley Austin LLP from July 1999 until her retirement at the beginning of 2021.  Prior to joining Sidley Austin LLP, she worked as an associate and partner at other major U.S. law firms exclusively in the area of financial services regulation, with a focus on international banks and their U.S. operations. Connie has particular interest and expertise in the cross-border regulation and supervision of international banks.  Throughout her career, she has provided advice to a wide variety of financial institutions on issues relating to key legislative and regulatory initiatives such as the International Banking Act, the Bank Holding Company Act, the USA PATRIOT Act, the Dodd-Frank Act, and cybersecurity, data privacy and fintech regulations, among others.  Connie has counseled financial institutions on compliance with U.S. domestic and international anti-money laundering (AML) laws, the development of new financial services, mergers and acquisitions and the specific implications of various federal and state banking regulations.   She has also advised banks on the appropriate responses to pending and actual regulatory enforcement actions and assisted financial institutions in developing comprehensive global compliance and corporate governance programs.  She has worked with international banks, including banks from the PRC and other Asian countries, planning to open branches, agencies, representative offices, broker-dealers and finance companies in the United States. Connie’s work has included a number of major AML, sanctions and anti-corruption projects for international financial institutions and advice to the government-appointed monitor for a global bank with operations in over 70 jurisdictions around the world.  These projects have provided opportunities to evaluate many different public policy and regulatory approaches intended to promote good corporate governance and risk management while sustaining appropriate business expansion. She holds a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University and a J.D. from the Yale Law School. As a Senior Fellow at M-RCBG, Connie’s research will be on U.S. policy regarding the entry, expansion and oversight of Chinese financial institutions.  Her faculty sponsor is Hal Scott, Adjunct Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and Emeritus Nomura Professor of International Financial Systems at Harvard Law School. 

Jeffrey Fuhrer (senior fellow 2020-2022)
Jeff Fuhrer was Executive Vice President and Senior Policy Advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston until stepping down at the start of 2020. He oversaw and then served as an advisor to the Bank’s regional and community outreach department and was responsible for the Bank’s diversity and inclusion functions. He has been an associate economist of the Federal Open Market Committee, and regularly attended this key U.S. policymaking meeting with the Bank’s president. In June 1992 he joined the Bank’s research department as an assistant vice president and economist, and from 1995–2001 headed its Open Economy Macro/International section. In 2000 Fuhrer was named senior vice president and monetary policy advisor, in 2001 he became director of research, and in 2006 he was named executive vice president. Fuhrer began his career at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, first as a research assistant, and then in 1985 returned as a senior economist after earning his doctorate. He has been active in economic research for more than three decades and has served as an associate editor for the American Economic Review. Fuhrer has published numerous scholarly papers on the interactions among monetary policy, inflation, consumer spending, and asset prices. He has been married for 39 years and has three grown children. Fuhrer earned an A.B. in economics with highest honors from Princeton University, and received his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. While at HKS, Jeff Fuhrer will pursue a research project, Issues in Monetary Policy Framework Design. His faculty sponsor is Karen Dynan, Professor of the Practice in the Department of Economics at the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Eoin Gahan (senior fellow 2013-2015)
Eoin Gahan has long experience in international and national government policy for industry, technology, trade, and investment. Until 2013, he was Head of the Trade, Environment, and Survey Analysis Department in Forfás, which is the Irish government agency for enterprise policy. His trade policy work has included the preparation of economic cooperation programmes, trade, and investment strategy for high-growth markets, trade facilitation issues, the potential impact of trade agreements, European integration, and the implications of new technologies for economic activity. He has also led work on socio-economic scenarios for 2025, long-term energy strategy, and Next Generation Networks implications and requirements. Earlier, he was a co-founder and director of an international consultancy in regulatory reform, and has carried out assignments for international and national organizations in regulation and competitiveness policy, including the World Bank, OECD, UNIDO, and other bodies. Previously, in Forfás, he directed the research of the National Competitiveness Council and instituted the Annual Competitiveness Reports. He also led the Irish Government’s initiative to prepare the business sector for the changeover from the national currency to the euro. Until 1995 he was a senior official in UNIDO dealing with long-term development objectives, regional and national strategies for industrialisation, technology analysis, and economic forecasting, and was also Coordinator of the United Nations Industrial Development Decade for Africa. As a senior fellow, Gahan’s research will focus on the fragmentation and complexity of trade negotiations and the additional challenges generated for trade policy. His faculty sponsor is Robert Z. Lawrence, Albert L. Williams Professor of International Trade and Investment.

Phillip C. Gildan (senior fellow 2017-2018)
Phillip C. Gildan a cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, is a principal shareholder in the international law firm of Greenberg Traurig, LLP. He has extensive experience in public infrastructure development, financing, public/private partnerships (P3s), municipalization and privatization of public infrastructure, utility mergers and acquisitions, and counseling a variety of government and private infrastructure industry participants. Phillip’s experience focuses on public proprietary infrastructure businesses, covering the full range of revenue producing public assets, including water, wastewater, stormwater, reclaimed water, electric, natural gas, and solid waste utilities. He represented the East Central Regional Wastewater Facilities Operation Board in 2014 in one of the first Green Bonds offerings in the Southeast United States, under the sustainable waste management, energy efficiency, and renewable energy categories of the Green Bond Principles. He has worked with the State of Alaska as P3 and finance counsel over the last 10 years on the development of a North Slope project to bring natural gas from the prolific oil and gas reservoirs in Prudhoe Bay and Point Thompson, negotiating joint venture agreements with the major international oil and gas producers. He has also counseled the City of Portland, Oregon in its bid to acquire Portland Gas & Electric from the Enron bankruptcy, the City of Philadelphia in its analysis of privatizing Philadelphia Gas Works, the City of Austin in its analysis of divesting ownership in a coal-fired electric generation facility and acquiring gas-fired generation facilities. He has worked with county and city governments and private utility providers in the municipalization of over 75 water, wastewater and natural gas utility systems, and over 45 public infrastructure projects using various forms of P3s and privatizations. As a Senior Fellow at M-RCBG working with faculty sponsor Henry Lee, Jassim M. Jaidah Family Director of the Environment and Natural Resources Program within the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, Faculty Co-Chair of the Sustainability Science Program, and a Senior Lecturer in Public Policy, Phillip will explore optimal structuring and financing of successful public infrastructure projects and a delivery structure decision matrix, including appropriate use of P3s. As a Senior Fellow, his research is entitled Addressing Federal Funding Program for Public Private Partnership Delivery of Public Infrastructure. His faculty sponsor is Henry Lee, Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School.

Elizabeth Golberg (senior fellow 2017-2019)
Elizabeth Golberg recently retired from her post as Director of Smart Regulation, responsible for regulatory policy development and its coordination and application in the European Commission. Since 2005, she has been closely involved in setting up the European Commission’s ‘Better Regulation’ system, overseeing and coordinating the preparation and quality control of impact assessments, evaluations, and stakeholder consultations. The application of EU law was an important component of her regulatory policy work and she developed and oversaw the introduction of important changes European Commission approach to enforcement. Elizabeth participated actively in international regulatory cooperation initiatives, as a member of the Bureau of the OECD Regulatory Policy Committee as well as in bilateral discussions, including those conducted in the context of the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations. Her interest in broad issues of regulatory policy followed her practical experience in environmental policy development as Assistant to the Director General and Head of Unit for Strategic Planning and Evaluation of the European Commission’s Environment Directorate General from 2002-2005. In addition to regulatory policy, Elizabeth has long experience in external relations and assistance programme coordination and management. She was Head of Unit for external institutional relations and G7/G20 in the European Commission’s Secretariat General, developing working relations with and acting as the main coordination point for the European External Action Service. She held various advisory posts in the external relations field in the European Commission from 1993 to 2002, focusing on the accession process of the Eastern European Member States and policy development and assistance programming in the EU’s near neighbourhood. Elizabeth was actively engaged in the pre-accession preparations of Slovakia and was coordinator for the European Union’s technical assistance programme (the Phare Programme) in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Elizabeth started her career in the Canadian Department of External Affairs and International Trade in 1980, serving in posts in Bonn and Brussels. Ms. Golberg has a Bachelor of Arts and Science from the University of Lethbridge, Canada and a Graduate Diploma in International Economics from the Graduate Institute of International Studies, University of Geneva, Switzerland. She has participated in executive courses at Oxford Said Business School and at the Salzburg Seminar. As a Senior Fellow, her research is entitled, Regulatory Cooperation – A Reality Check. Her faculty sponsor is Joseph Aldy, Associate Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School.

Deborah Gordon (senior fellow 2017-2019)
Deborah Gordon is a seasoned health care executive and a thought leader in health care consumerism. She currently advises entrepreneurial ventures and other companies on consumer strategies, engagement, and marketing in health care. Deb was formerly CEO of Voxent, a national technology firm supporting reproductive health providers with custom electronic health record and analytics tools and a national data warehouse. Deb had previously held health insurance leadership roles, notably as Chief Marketing and External Affairs Officer at Network Health, a Massachusetts health plan now part of Tufts Health Plan and ranked NCQA’s #1 Medicaid plan nationally. Under Deb’s leadership, Network Health received hundreds of awards, including Health Leaders Magazine’s Top Leadership Team award. She helped the plan double its membership under Massachusetts health reform, expand product assortment, and transition to the Affordable Care Act. Deb was recognized as a 2011 Boston Business Journal “40 Under 40” honoree, an award highlighting Boston’s most influential business and civic leaders. In 2013, Deb was named an Eisenhower Fellow, a non-partisan program chaired by retired General Colin Powell that fosters the exchange of information, ideas, and perspectives among global leaders. On her fellowship, Deb traveled to Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore to explore the role of consumers in high-performing health systems. She has served on Harvard University’s Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility, as a Board member in MIT’s Delta V start-up accelerator, and as a mentor in Boston University’s Business Health Sector program. She has served on the Editorial Advisory Board for Fierce Health Payer and as Fierce Healthcare’s Innovation Awards’ head judge, and on Marketing Health Services’ Editorial Board, the Advisory Group for Massachusetts’ Choosing Wisely campaign, and several nonprofit Boards. Deb earned a B.A. in Bioethics from Brown University and an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School. As a Senior Fellow, Deb will research health care shopping and how to improve functioning of consumer markets in health care. As a Senior Fellow, her research is entitled Beyond Health Care Transparency: Applying Marketing Principles to Improve the Functioning of Consumer Health Care Markets. Her faculty sponsor is Joseph Newhouse, John D. MacArthur Professor of Health Policy and Management at Harvard Kennedy School.

Megan Greene (senior fellow 2020-2022)
Megan Greene has been a leading voice in global macroeconomics on both sides of the Atlantic for the past 15 years. She was previously the Global Chief Economist at Manulife/John Hancock Asset Management, where she was responsible for forecasting global macro trends and providing analysis to support the firm’s investment teams around the world. Prior to working at Manulife, Megan ran her own London-based economics consulting practice, Maverick Intelligence, serving global private sector clients as well as a number of governments and central banks. Megan cut her teeth as an international economist by covering Europe through the depths of the euro crisis, first at the Economist Intelligence Unit and then running the European research team at Roubini Global Economics. She first became renowned for her coverage of the euro crisis in 2008, when she correctly predicted a Greek government bailout and eventual debt write down. A leading expert on the euro crisis, her views were widely sought on the German, Irish, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Cypriot and German economies as well. Additionally, she advised both the UK House of Commons and House of Lords on the Brexit referendum. Megan writes a monthly column on global economics for the Financial Times and has written frequently for Politico, Bloomberg View and Foreign Affairs. She regularly appears as an expert on global macroeconomics on Bloomberg TV and radio, CNBC, CNN, NPR, the BBC and Sky News. She is a member of the board of directors of the National Association for Business Economists, the Parliamentary Budget Office in Ireland, Rebuilding Macroeconomics and Econofact. Megan is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves as an Affiliate of the Rhodes Center for International Economics and Finance at Brown University, a Non-Resident Fellow at Trinity College Dublin and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the German Marshall Fund. She was the first female member of the centuries-old International Club of Business Economists and has taught seminars on sovereign debt crises and global macroeconomics at Princeton University, Brown University, the European University Institute and Trinity College Dublin. She regularly advises governments and central banks in the US, UK, eurozone and Japan. She holds BA in Political Economy from Princeton University and a MSc in European Studies from Nuffield College, Oxford University. As a Senior Fellow, her research is entitled, Narrowing the Gap: Theory vs Reality for Drivers of Inequality. Her faculty sponsor is Karen Dynan, Professor of the Practice of Economics at the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Michal Halperin (senior fellow 2021-2023) 
Michal Halperin is a legal expert in the fields of competition, antitrust laws and regulation. Between 2016 and 2021 she was the Director-General of the Israeli Competition Authority.  She led the Competition Authority in merger review, criminal and administrative enforcement, advocacy for the promotion of competition, and economic research. In her term as head of the Competition Authority she instituted a reform of the Israeli Competition Law; created the Advocacy arm of the Competition Authority and built multi-disciplinary working teams. Under her guidance, the Authority transformed to become a key player in almost every economic reform in Israel. Some of the markets in which she was able to promote competition are the cellular, natural gas, dairy, and financial payment markets. Michal Halperin also led the Competition Authority’s criminal prosecution and administrative enforcement in landmark cases against cartels and dominant entities such as the elevator companies, the natural gas monopoly (Chevron) and Facebook.  Prior to her term as Director-General of the Competition Authority, she was head of the Competition and Antitrust Group at Meitar Law. Michal Halperin also previously held the position of Chief Legal Advisor at the Israel Competition Authority (then Israel Antitrust Authority) where she headed a team of 25 legal professionals. From 2000 -2001, she was a Special Legal Advisor at Mintz Levin in Boston.  She began her professional career as an intern in the Supreme Court of Israel, and was then a lawyer in Erdinast, Ben Nathan, Toledano & Co. Advocates, becoming a partner there after five years. Michal Halperin is a graduate of the Law Faculty of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. As a Senior Fellow at M-RCBG, her research will focus on finding the optimal competitive model for public health services. She will base her research on the Israeli model as a case study.  Her faculty sponsor is Amitabh Chandra, Ethel Zimmerman Wiener Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. 

Sajid Javid (senior fellow 2020-2021, on leave 2021-22)
The Rt Hon Sajid Javid MP is a British Member of Parliament, former Chancellor of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom and was appointed Secretary of State for Health and Social Care in June 2021. He served in the Cabinet of three Prime Ministers as the Secretary of State for five different Departments, including the Treasury and Home Office. Before going into politics he worked in business and finance, latterly as a senior Managing Director for Deutsche Bank. Sajid was born in Rochdale, England. He was the first of his family to win a place at University, attending Exeter to read Economics and Politics. He is married to Laura and they are proud parents of four children. Sajid started his career at Chase Manhattan Bank NA in 1991, first in London and then in New York. Aged 25, he was made a Vice President. In 2000, he joined Deutsche Bank in London to help build its business in emerging markets. As a senior Managing Director, Sajid moved to Singapore with Deutsche Bank in 2006 to run its credit trading, commodities, convertibles and principal finance businesses in Asia. He also served as a board member of Deutsche Bank International (Asia) Limited. Sajid left Deutsche Bank in the summer of 2009 to give back through public service. He was elected as a Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom for the constituency of Bromsgrove in 2010, and has been re-elected three times since. Sajid served as Economic Secretary and Financial Secretary before joining the UK Cabinet in 2014 as the Secretary of State for Culture, Media & Sport, the first of his intake to join the Cabinet, and the first ethnic minority MP to become a Secretary of State in British history. In 2015 he was appointed Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and President of the Board of Trade. In 2016, Sajid was appointed Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. In 2018, he became Home Secretary, one of the four Great Offices of State, and took on responsibility for the UK’s internal affairs, national security, borders and immigration policy. In 2019, Sajid was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, responsible for all the UK’s economic and financial matters. He resigned from that office in February 2020. Sajid has served on the UK’s National Security Council for over 3 years. He is a member for life of Her Majesty’s Privy Council. As a Senior Fellow Sajid will research the lessons to be learned by governments and business from the COVID-19 pandemic and how they can be used to better prepare for future high-impact low-probability events. His faculty sponsor is Richard Zeckhauser, the Frank P. Ramsey Professor of Political Economy, Harvard Kennedy School.

Jo Johnson (senior fellow 2020-2022)
Rt Hon Jo Johnson is a President’s Professorial Fellow at King’s College London and Chairman of TES Group, owner of the Times Educational Supplement and a leading peer-to-peer marketplace for teacher resources, recruitment and software services. A Member of Parliament between 2010-2019, Jo represented the south-east London constituency of Orpington for the Conservative Party. Over this period, he more than quadrupled his majority and, in 2017, secured the highest vote share (63%) in more than sixty years. He served as a senior Government Minister under three successive Prime Ministers, including as Head of the No10 Downing Street Policy Unit and Minister of State in the Cabinet Office; Minister of State for Transport; Minister for London; and Minister of State, attending Cabinet, for Universities, Science & Innovation. He introduced the Higher Education and Research Act 2017, a major piece of legislation which created a new regulator, the Office for Students, and established a mechanism (the Teaching Excellence Framework) to make universities more accountable for teaching quality and student outcomes. The Act also created a national strategic research agency, UK Research and Innovation. Before entering Parliament, he was an award-winning journalist at the Financial Times, where over 13 years he reported from over 20 countries in various senior roles, including Contributing Editor, Associate Editor, Head of the Lex Column, South Asia Bureau Chief and Paris Correspondent. Co-author of The Man who Tried to Buy the World (Penguin, 2003) and co-editor of Reconnecting Britain and India: Ideas for an Enhanced Partnership (Academic Foundation, 2011), he has a first class degree from Oxford University in Modern History and an MBA from INSEAD. He is a life member of the Privy Council; a Governor of the Ditchley Foundation; and a Member of the European Council on Foreign Relations. He is married to Guardian journalist and author Amelia Gentleman. They live in London and have two children. While at Harvard Kennedy School, Jo will pursue a research project, “Global Britain”. His faculty sponsor is Jason Furman, Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy at Harvard Kennedy School.

Steve Johnson (senior fellow 2018-2020)
Steve Johnson has been a technologist, entrepreneur, private investor, and philanthropist for thirty years, professionally specializing in building innovative technologies into successful enterprises, with a personal and philanthropic focus on education, climate change awareness, the arts, and gay rights equality. Steve was born and raised in Los Angeles, earning a Bachelor of Arts in economics from University of Southern California in 1980 and an MPP from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School in 1985. He left the Ph.D. program at Harvard in 1990 to start a technology company based upon his invention of a digital means of transmitting sound and images over telephone lines (now known as ‘streaming media’), which was integrated into America Online in 1993 and enabled the first availability of images, sound and video in an online service, a precursor to the Web which arrived in 1995. He has been a technology investor and entrepreneur (and avid marathoner and mountaineer) in the Boston area since 1999, founding companies in ad technology, Web personalization, and medical IT. From 2013-17, Steve served as chairman of the board of trustees of Harvard’s American Repertory Theater, a theater committed to broadening the impact of theater on community, ideas, and understanding. Since 2005, Steve has spearheaded efforts in New South Wales, Australia to honor and seek justice for hundreds of victims of gay hate crimes that ravaged the Australian gay community in the 1980s and 1990s, and took the lives of dozens of men, including Steve’s younger brother, Scott, in Sydney in 1988. This effort helped presage a national plebiscite for gay marriage legalization, which was finally passed in December 2017. Long committed to education and the arts, the Johnson family helped found the first (and still only) non-denominational independent high school in Orange County, California, Sage Hill High School, which opened in 2000 in Newport Beach, CA. As a Senior Fellow, his research is entitled The “Artificial Intelligence” Myth – The Intelligence is Human; It Must be Regulated Now. His faculty sponsor is HKS Professor Juliette Kayyem, Belfer Senior Lecturer in International Security.

Lewis Kaden (senior fellow 2014-2016)
Lew Kaden is currently a Senior Advisor at TGG Group; Lead Director of ArcelorMittal SA, the world’s leading steel and mining company; Chairman of the board of the Markle Foundation; and Vice Chairman of the board of the Asia Society. Kaden is the John Harvard Gregory Lecturer on World Organization and a Senior Fellow of the Program on Corporate Governance at Harvard Law School and a Senior Fellow of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center on Business and Government at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Kaden also serves as a trustee on the boards of the Center for New American Security, Human Rights First, the Business Council for International Understanding, and the Century Foundation, and is a member of the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations. From 2005 to 2013, Kaden was Vice Chairman of Citigroup. At Citi, he was a member of the Executive Committee, Business Heads Committee, and Business Development Committee; he was Chairman of the Business Practices Committee, Controls and Compliance Committee, the Public Sector Clients Group, and the Citi Foundation. Before joining Citigroup, he served for 21 years as a partner at Davis, Polk & Wardwell. From 1976-1984, Kaden was a Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, where he also served as the Director of the Center for Law and Economic Studies from 1980 to l984. He was Counsel to the Governor of New Jersey from 1974-1976. He was the Chairman of the United States government’s Overseas Presence Advisory Panel (1998-2001), the New York State Industrial Cooperation Council, and Governor Mario Cuomo’s Commission on Competitiveness (1987-1992). He served as a moderator for the Public Broadcasting System’s Media and Society Seminars, including the “Ethics in America” series, which won a Peabody award. He graduated from Harvard College in 1963, and was the de Jersey John Harvard scholar at Emmanuel College, Cambridge University, from 1963 to 1964. In 1967 he received his LL.B. from Harvard Law School, where he was a member of the Law Review. As an M-RCBG senior fellow, Kaden is studying financial regulation. His faculty sponsor is Richard Zeckhauser, Frank Plumpton Ramsey Professor of Political Economy.

Farrukh Khan (senior fellow 2016-2017)
Farrukh Khan has twenty-years of international diplomatic experience as well as a sustained record of leadership and extensive expertise in sustainable development, climate change, environmental policy and energy. As Head of Climate Finance and Senior Manager on the UN Secretary-General’s Climate Change Support Team, he currently leads the work on mobilizing climate finance both from the public and private sector and investment that would lead to transition towards a low carbon resilient world. Since the 2014 Climate Summit, he has led the work on forging new and innovative partnerships and instruments that were critical to laying the foundation of the Paris Agreement adopted in December 2015. He also led the establishment of the first ever, global, multi-stakeholder initiative by the UN Secretary General on climate resilience: Anticipate, Absorb, Reshape (A2R) with strong support from the UN system, private sector, academia and civil society. In his capacity as Pakistan’s lead negotiator on climate change and sustainable development (2008-2013), he was one of the key players at the international climate negotiations since the Bali Plan of Action in 2007, at the United Nations in forging the Post 2015 Development Agenda and within South Asian region. He chaired several aspects of the International climate talks and proposed and negotiated the establishment of the United Nations Adaptation Fund (AF), the Green Climate Fund at Durban (2010) and the UNFCCC’s Standing Committee on Finance. As spokesperson of the developing world, he led the negotiations on the Rio+20 (2012) outcome “Future we want” both in the lead up to and at Rio. More specifically, he negotiated the agreement on launching Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). As a Senior Fellow, he will focus on connecting national climate action plans to financing and resilience. More specifically, Mr. Khan will analyze how international assistance can enable mobilization of domestic resources; how national plans can be translated into policies, measures that would promote financing and bankability of these plans and; how altering national regulatory and incentive structure can reshape development pathways. His faculty sponsor is Robert Stavins, Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government and Director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.

Ranch Kimball (senior fellow 2020-2022)
Ranch Kimball has a broad perspective on the intersection of company leadership, urban policies and economic development, and the connections with innovation, basic science and with the regulated government environment. His business career included long service as a partner at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) on 3 continents, then running the private equity firm Kissinger McLarty Capital Group. Later, he was Governor Mitt Romney’s Secretary of Economic Development in Massachusetts, then served as President and CEO of a Harvard research hospital, COO of a college, and was a Managing Director at the world’s largest innovation center for start-ups. He has toured and worked with over 100 innovation districts around the U.S. and internationally. As a corporate and board leader, Ranch has served on 16 boards, ranging from publicly-traded companies to universities, museums, and multiple public-entity boards. He has chaired eight of those boards. While a Senior Fellow at M-RCBG, Ranch will work on a research project, A Quantitative Approach to Creating Successful, Diverse, and Inclusive Innovation Districts in American Cities. His faculty sponsor is Edward Glaeser, the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University.

Derek Kirkland (senior fellow 2015-2016)
Derek Kirkland is currently Vice-Chairman of Investment Banking at Morgan Stanley, where he has worked in the Financial Institutions Group (“FIG”) for almost 29 years, advising clients on their capital markets and M&A strategies. Morgan Stanley’s FIG business is broad; half of its revenues originate outside the US, and it works for both “incumbents” and “disrupters.” Kirkland’s career reflected that breadth, with long assignments in each of New York, London, and San Francisco. His career was driven by waves of transactions as his clients responded to globalization, IT, and de-regulation, including: forming EU-wide and US national banks; developing US national and global insurers, and separating-out health insurers; creating a “Fin-Tech” industry; investing in Asia and Latin America in the last decade; and, not least, recapitalizing banks and insurers after the financial crisis, and selectively dismantling pan-European institutions. Although his career was in financial services, Kirkland has kept an abiding interest in energy policy ever since studying for his MPP at HKS in 2003. Concerned about climate change and at the inadequacy of the US policy response, Kirkland intends to focus on the role of federally funded energy research as a tool to abate GHG emissions. Prior to Morgan Stanley, Mr. Kirkland worked at Booz-Allen. He received an MPP from HKS in 2003 and a BA from Princeton in 1979. He is a member of the board of the Third Way, a center-progressive think-tank. He is active in the Center for Responsible Growth, a small think-tank exploring the possibility of enacting a carbon-tax in the next Congress. His faculty sponsor is William Hogan, Raymond Plank Professor of Global Energy Policy and Research Director of the Harvard Electricity Policy Group (HEPG).

Anshul Krishan (senior fellow 2016-2017)
Anshul Krishan recently served on the Management Team at the International Finance Corporation ("IFC") - the private sector arm of the World Bank Group - as Chief of Staff in the Office of the CEO. In this capacity he helped develop and was responsible for implementation of cross-cutting strategic matters across the Corporation globally. This included framing and monitoring of annual program priorities for regions and products, client coverage across business lines and overall administrative structure. He was further responsible for guiding execution across corporate functions notably finance and budget, risk, IT and HR. He also played a key role in capital markets innovation by enabling new products and greater breadth to IFC's global treasury operations. Anshul was a member of the IFC Corporate Risk Committee, Business Planning & Administration Steering Group and the World Bank Group Finance Business Committee. He joined the IFC in 2013 and was based in Washington D.C. until his departure earlier this year. Prior to his time at the IFC, Anshul was Managing Director at Goldman, Sachs & Co. where he spent almost 15 years in various capital markets and investment banking roles based in London, Hong Kong, Mumbai and Singapore. In particular, as Head of Capital Markets, Anshul played a leading role in the development of the firm's financing advisory business in South East Asia and, as Chief Operating Officer in India, he helped drive its overall advisory activity in that market. He has facilitated the raising of equity and debt capital from the public and private markets by clients and periodically served on select committees under national industry bodies and the Ministry of Finance to advance capital markets, public-private and infrastructure related financing efforts. Anshul is also a global leadership fellow of the Aspen Institute. As Senior Fellow, Anshul will drive thinking on the application of "enabling" capital as a catalyst to bridge the infrastructure financing gap; and to aid the development of economically viable investment products so that improvements in financial inclusion may be more sustainable. His faculty sponsor is Akash Deep, Senior Lecturer in Public Policy.

Philippe Le Corre (senior fellow 2017-2019)
Philippe Le Corre has a joint appointment as an Associate in Research with the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard. From 2014 to 2017, he was a Visiting Fellow in the Foreign Policy Program at The Brookings Institution in Washington DC, specializing on China-Europe relations and China’s global rise. His career spans government, academia, media and business. He was Special Assistant for international affairs to the French defense minister, and also served as a Senior Policy Adviser on Asia within the Ministry of defense’s directorate for international relations and strategy. In the private sector, Mr. Le Corre worked as a partner with Publicis Consultants in Paris and Shanghai, where he ran a team of advisers to the Shanghai World Expo 2010 Organizing Committee. He previously worked in Asia as a foreign correspondent for nine years, and has published extensively on the region in The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The South China Morning Post, The Straits Times, Politico, Le Monde, Les Echos and Foreign Affairs among others. He is the author or co-author of several books including China’s Offensive in Europe (Brookings Institution Press, 2016), Quand la Chine va au marché (Maxima, 1999) and Après Hong Kong (Autrement, 1997). He published several papers on China including China as a geoeconomic influencer: Four European Case Studies (Carnegie Working paper, October 2018); China’s rise: What about a transatlantic dialog? (Asia-Europe Journal, April 2017, co-authored with Jonathan Pollack) and China Abroad: The Long March to Europe (China Economic Quarterly, June 2016). Le Corre received his MSc in Asian Studies from the National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilizations (Inalco) in Paris and his MA in political science from the Sorbonne in Paris. He was a Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard and a Sachs Scholar in 2003-2004. Mr. Le Corre will look at the perceptions of China’s geoeconomic and geopolitical expansion, especially in Europe and Central Asia. His faculty sponsor is Professor Anthony Saich.

Amir Levi (senior fellow 2017-2018)
As head of the Budgets Department at the Ministry of Finance, Amir Levi manages the state budget through Government and Knesset plenum, setting fiscal policy targets, the budget framework, deficit target and economic reform programs. He is responsible for structural priorities such as increasing competition and addressing the cost of living, integrating Israeli Arabs and the Ultra-Orthodox community into the economy, increasing productivity and innovation, developing transportation infrastructure and systems, gas and water, public health and the security budget. In this capacity, he was the lead architect of Government Resolution 922, the ground-breaking five-year economic development plan for Arab citizens, and continues to see its budget allocation and implementation. Amir Levi has been serving as the Director of the Budgets Department since 2013, after having served in a number of key positions at the Ministry of Finance between 1996-2006, including Deputy Budget Supervisor, Communication and Tourism Coordinator, and Industry Referant responsible for the budget of the Ministry of Industry and Trade. Between the years 2006 and 2013, Mr. Levi was the CEO of Shikun & Binui Renewable Energy, a company that initiates, constructs and operates power stations, especially Solar, in Israel and abroad. He has been lecturing on macroeconomic policy issues at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem since 2015. Mr. Levi has served on the board of directors of several government corporations, as well as on the boards of the England-Israel and Singapore-Israel Industrial Research & Development Foundations. He holds a BA in Economics and Political Science, and an MA in Economics, both from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. As a Senior Fellow, his research is entitled How Israel can promote minorities and address growing inequality. His faculty sponsor is Tarek Masoud, Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations at Harvard Kennedy School

Dennis Lockhart (senior fellow 2017-2018)
Dennis Lockhart’s career includes time in the private sector, academia, and government. He recently stepped down from the position of president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. In this role, Lockhart was responsible for all the Bank’s activities including monetary policy, bank supervision and regulation, and payment services. In addition, he served on the Federal Reserve’s chief monetary policy body, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). Within the Federal Reserve System, he chaired the Conference of Presidents for his final two years and earlier chaired the Information Technology Oversight Committee. Before becoming a central banker, Lockhart was a member of the faculty of Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service where he chaired the masters program’s concentrations in global commerce and finance and international business–government relations. He taught courses focused on global business strategy, international finance and investment, project finance, and business-government relations. He also was an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. Simultaneously, he was chairman of the Small Enterprise Assistance Funds, a sponsor of emerging markets venture capital/private equity funds. Earlier he was managing partner of a boutique private investment firm with activity in Africa and Latin America and president of Heller International Group, a financial firm with activities in commercial finance and merchant banking in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. In 2000, he chaired the Advisory Committee of the U.S. Export-Import Bank. At the start of his career, Lockhart held various positions, both international and domestic, with Citicorp/Citibank (now Citigroup). He worked in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Greece, Iran, Latin America and the southeast United States. He was Citicorp’s senior corporate officer and head of corporate banking for the southeast domiciled in Atlanta. Lockhart was born and grew up in California. He was educated at Stanford University and the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He also attended the Senior Executive Program at the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and served as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve. As a Senior Fellow, his research is entitled Renewing America’s Infrastructure: a comprehensive examination of options and implications. His faculty sponsor is Tony Gomez-Ibanez, Derek C. Bok Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School.

Nick Lovegrove (senior fellow 2011-2013)
Nick Lovegrove is a Director of McKinsey & Company who has served for the last five years as Managing Partner of the firm’s Washington, DC office. He has also led McKinsey’s global research on public and social sector reform and worked with clients in the public, private, and social sectors. Prior to 2006, Mr. Lovegrove spent more than 20 years in McKinsey’s London Office, where he led both the public sector and media practices in Europe. He served as an independent adviser to Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Strategy Unit, focusing on economic development, education, and healthcare. Mr. Lovegrove holds an MPP degree from Harvard Kennedy School, an MBA from INSEAD, and an MA degree in Modern History from Oxford University. As a Senior Fellow of the Center, he will explore how new approaches to long-term capitalism will create the need for new cross-sector skills, mindsets, and behaviors. His faculty sponsors are John Haigh, M-RCBG co-director and Executive Dean of HKS, and Richard Zeckhauser, Frank Plumpton Ramsey Professor of Political Economy.

Marshall Lux (senior fellow 2014-2016)
Marshall Lux has served as a financial-services consultant advising some of the world’s most important bankers, financiers, and C-suite executives for nearly 30 years. Most recently, he has served as a senior partner and managing director at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and the head of its North American private equity practice, which he helped build. He has transitioned to be a Senior Advisor at BCG, where he will continue to remain active, to devote time to his role as senior fellow and to serve on corporate and private equity boards. Lux has built a wide network of financial institutions and private equity firms globally and has worked on due diligence for some of the largest private equity deals in history. During 2008-2009, he served as chief risk officer for all consumer products at JPMorgan Chase & Co. He reported to the bank's board, dealt with regulators, oversaw some 10,000 people and managed mortgages, credit cards, auto and student loans on a daily basis. Later, Lux moved into financial-services investment banking as an MD overseeing mergers and acquisitions and related financings. Throughout his career, Lux has also participated in 35 pro bono assignments and has served on a number of non-profit boards, including the Harlem Children’s Zone, the New York Historical Society’s Chairman’s Council, the New York Tenement Museum, Junior Achievement, and Reading is Fundamental. After 9/11, Lux was one of the leaders of a cross-firm consortium looking at the cost of the attack on various New York industries, personally overseeing the financial module. He also worked for the New York City Fire Department, analyzing the 9/11 audio tapes to understand how to be better prepared for future events; ten years later, he returned to develop an operational strategy through 2020 for the NYFD. In the past year, he designed and taught a course at New York University’s Stern School of Business on consulting and he was recently accepted as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. As a senior fellow, Lux, a summa cum laude graduate of Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School and a Ford and Baker Scholar at Harvard Business School, is focusing on the unanticipated consequences of the Dodd-Frank Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Robert Glauber, Adjunct Lecturer of Public Policy, has agreed to serve as sponsor on the project.

Marco Magnani (senior fellow 2011-2013)
Marco Magnani has been working in investment banking for over 15 years, about a decade on Wall Street at Credit Suisse First Boston and JPMorgan as Vice President and then in Europe at Mediobanca as a Managing Director. As a Senior Fellow his research work, “Italy 2030,” will focus on key economic reforms needed by Italy in the long-term. Mr. Magnani was appointed Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, is on the WEF Global Agenda Council for Banking and Capital Markets, is President of the Board of American Field Service Italy, serves on the Executive Board and on the Educational Activities Committee of the National Federation of Cavalieri del Lavoro. He is currently a member of the Aspen Institute, Institute for International Affairs, Chatham House, and Young Leaders of the Council for the US & Italy. He is a graduate in Economics of the University of Rome and holds an MBA from Columbia University.

Lawrence Makovich (senior fellow 2015-2017)
Lawrence Makovich, IHS CERA Vice President and Senior Advisor for Global Power, is a highly respected expert on the electric power industry. He directs IHS CERA research efforts in the power sector as part of IHS CERA’s Office of the Chairman. He is an authority on electricity markets, regulation, economics, and strategy. His current research focuses on electric power market structures, demand and supply fundamentals, wholesale and retail power markets, emerging technologies, and asset valuations and strategies. Makovich is currently advising or has recently advised several large utilities in major strategic engagements. He has testified numerous times before the US Congress on electric power policy. He has advised the government of China on electric power deregulation and transmission in competitive markets, and the Brazilian Congress invited him to testify on power liberalization. He examined the impact of deregulation on residential power prices and the development of resource adequacy mechanisms in the IHS CERA Multiclient Study Beyond the Crossroads: The Future Direction of Power Industry Restructuring. He was also a project director for the IHS CERA Multiclient Study Crossing the Divide: The Future of Clean Energy, the author of the IHS CERA Multiclient Study Fueling North America’s Energy Future: The Unconventional Natural Gas Revolution and the Carbon Agenda, and the study director of the IHS CERA Multiclient Study Smart Grid: Closing the Gap Between Perception and Reality. Among Makovich's other significant IHS CERA studies are examinations of the California power crisis in Crisis by Design: California's Electric Power Crunch and Beyond California's Power Crisis: Impact, Solutions, and Lessons. Makovich has been a lecturer on managerial economics at Northeastern University's Graduate School of Business. He holds a BA from Boston College, an MA from the University of Chicago, and a PhD from the University of Massachusetts. As a senior fellow, he will explore strategies to reframe power sector climate initiatives. His faculty sponsor is William Hogan, Raymond Plank Professor of Global Energy Policy and Research Director of the Harvard Electricity Policy Group (HEPG).

Vikram Mansharamani (senior fellow 2013-2015)
Vikram Mansharamani is a Lecturer at Yale University where he teaches the seminar “Financial Booms & Busts” to Yale College undergraduates and co-teaches “Adventures in Business Ethics" to business school and undergraduate students. He is also the author of BOOMBUSTOLOGY: Spotting Financial Bubbles before They Burst and is a regular commentator in the financial and business media. He has been an active participant in the financial markets for the last 20 years, during which time he has held positions in management consulting, investment banking, and asset management. He currently serves as chairman of the Torit Language Center Montessori school and is a member of the Board of Governors of the Association of Yale Alumni. He earned a PhD and MS from the Sloan School of Management at MIT, an MS in Political Science (Security Studies) from MIT, and a BA from Yale University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated with distinction. As a senior fellow, he will conduct research for a project on the relative abilities of generalists and specialists to navigate uncertainty. His faculty sponsor is Richard Zeckhauser, Frank Plumpton Ramsey Professor of Political Economy.

Stanley Marcuss (senior fellow 2015-2016)
Stanley Marcuss is a partner at Bryan Cave. As counsel to the International Finance Subcommittee of the Senate Banking Committee in the early ‘70s, he played a central role in the development of legislation relating to export controls, antiboycott law, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the Export-Import Bank. As Senior Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce in the late ‘70s, he headed U.S. antidumping and countervailing duty programs and administered U.S. export controls and antiboycott laws, as well as a variety of other international trade regulatory regimes. While in government, Marcuss was a member of the U.S. delegation to China that began negotiations for the first U.S.-China trade agreement and an end to the U.S. freeze on Chinese assets. Marcuss’s law practice covers virtually all aspects of U.S. law pertaining to international trade and investment and includes such subjects as foreign bribery, international boycotts, economic sanctions, unfair trade practices, customs and U.S. import remedies. He has had experience in defending U.S. government civil and criminal investigations, appearing before U.S. appellate courts and establishing internal corporate compliance programs. He has also published dozens of articles pertaining to subjects in his field. Marcuss is a graduate of Trinity College in Connecticut, Cambridge University in England, where he was a Marshall Scholar, and the Harvard Law School. He is an avid oarsman, sailor, and the head of a men’s a Capella chorus in Washington, D.C. As a senior fellow, Marcuss will explore issues pertaining to public/private collaboration in urban revitalization, with a special focus on Washington, D.C., West Baltimore, and similarly situated environments. His faculty sponsor is John D. Donahue, Raymond Vernon Senior Lecturer in Public Policy.

Aparna Mathur (senior fellow 2021-2023) 
Aparna Mathur is a Senior Research Manager in Economics at Amazon. In this role, she tracks and conducts research to help identify labor and employment related challenges faced by Amazon’s domestic and global workforce, with a view to informing best policy. Prior to Amazon, she spent a year as a Senior Economist at the Council of Economic Advisers. She joined the Council as part of the COVID-19 response task force at the peak of the crisis in April 2020 and worked with epidemiologists on the health aspects of the crisis, while also tracking the economic downturn that came with the lockdowns. Prior to joining CEA, for fifteen years, she was a resident scholar in economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. At AEI, she directed the AEI-Brookings Project on Paid Family and Medical Leave, building bipartisan momentum on paid leave, for which she was recognized in the Politico 50 list for 2017. She also co-authored a novel empirical paper on the incidence of the corporate income tax on workers, which became a prominent policy debate during the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017. Her academic research has focused on income inequality and mobility, tax policy, labor markets and small businesses. She has published in several top scholarly journals including the Journal of Public Economics, the National Tax Journal  and the Journal of Health Economics, testified several times before Congress and published numerous articles in the popular press on issues of policy relevance, including on her own blog at Forbes. Her work has been cited in leading news magazines such as the Economist, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. She has regularly provided commentary on prominent radio and television shows such as NPR’s Marketplace and the Diane Rehm Show, as well as CNBC and C-SPAN.  She has been an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. She received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2005, and is currently serving on the University of Maryland Economics Leadership Council. She is also on the Board of the National Academy of Social Insurance as well as the National Economists Club. While an M-RCBG Senior Fellow, Aparna will work on a project: Frayed Protection: The U.S. Safety Net and Pandemic Emergency Measures During COVID-19. Her faculty advisor is Jason Furman, Aetna Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. 

Karen Gordon Mills (senior fellow 2013-2015)
Karen Gordon Mills was sworn in as the 23rd Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) in April of 2009 after being appointed by President Barack Obama and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate. She served in the President’s Cabinet from January 2012-July 2013. As part of the Cabinet, Mills was a key member of the President’s economic leadership team, reflecting the important role that small businesses and entrepreneurs play in our nation’s long-term economic growth and global competitiveness. At the SBA, she led a team of more than 3,000 employees and managed a portfolio of more than $100 billion in loan guarantees. Mills streamlined and simplified SBA’s core loan programs, reduced paperwork, shortened turnaround times, and increased transparency across the agency. These efforts resulted in record-breaking years for SBA lending in 2011 and 2012. And, in 2012, the SBA’s Small Business Investment Company (SBIC) program had its third consecutive record breaking year. In addition, Mills led the development of innovative Federal programs that have helped small businesses create regional clusters, gain access to early stage capital, hire skilled workers, boost exports, and tap into commercial supply chains. Prior to the SBA, Mills held leadership positions in the private sector including several private equity firms. Most recently, she was president of the MMP Group, which invested in businesses in consumer products, food, textiles, and industrial components. In 2007, Maine Governor John Baldacci appointed Mills to chair Maine’s Council on Competitiveness and the Economy, where she focused on regional development initiatives, including a regional economic cluster with Maine’s boatbuilding industry. She also served on the Governor’s Council for the Redevelopment of the Brunswick Naval Air Station. Mills earned an AB in economics from Harvard University and an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she was a Baker Scholar. Additionally, she is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and was vice chairman of the Harvard Overseers. As a senior fellow, she will conduct research on entrepreneurship and American economic growth. Her faculty sponsors are Dick Cavanagh, Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy, and John Haigh, M-RCBG Co-Director and Executive Dean of HKS.

Justin Muzinich (senior fellow 2022-2023) 
Justin Muzinich served as the US Deputy Secretary of the Treasury from 2018-2021, with broad responsibility for US economic policy.  While Deputy Secretary, Justin was also responsible for the roles of Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence and Under Secretary for Domestic Finance, managing the divisions of Treasury that oversee national security policy, financial policy and the financing of the US Government.  Justin played a leading role in the economic response to Covid-19 and represented the US at G7, G20 and OECD meetings. His national security responsibilities included the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and a wide range of National Security Council matters. From 2017-2018 Justin served as Counselor to the Secretary of the Treasury and helped lead the effort to reform the US tax code. From 2015-2016, he served as Policy Director for Jeb Bush's presidential campaign. Before entering public service, Justin served as President of Muzinich & Co. and taught at Columbia Business School. Justin began his career in the mergers and acquisitions group at Morgan Stanley. He earned his AB from Harvard College with Phi Beta Kappa honors, his JD from Yale Law School, where he was an Olin Fellow, and his MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar. He is the CEO of Muzinich & Co, a Distinguished Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and a board member of New York Presbyterian Hospital.  While a Senior Fellow at M-RCBG, Justin will pursue research on how capital markets can support US international economic competitiveness.  His Faculty advisor is Richard Zeckhauser, Frank Plumpton Ramsey Professor of Political Economy at HKS.

Euvin Naidoo (senior fellow 2017-2018)
Selected by Forbes.com in 2011 as one of the African continent's Top 10 most ‘Powerful and Influential Men’ of his generation, Euvin Naidoo's focus is on innovation within financial services and the future of banking and insurance. Euvin has been engaged as an executive within financial services and management consulting in both the USA and Africa for the past 15 years. He joined the Boston Consulting Group in February 2016 as the first South African Partner and Managing Director based out of the Johannesburg office, leading the Financial Institutions and Public Sector practices across Africa. His work focuses on digital innovation and organizational leadership and transformation within banking, insurance and the public sector incorporating the themes of agility, customer centricity, automation, robotics and the implications of the 'Fourth Industrial Revolution' on organizations. Selected in 2009 as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum (WEF), in 2012 he was recruited to the Forum’s Global Agenda Councils, where served 2 terms on the United States Council. A graduate of the Harvard Business School, in 2007, Euvin delivered the opening talk at the annual TED Global conference, an event aimed at reframing the African dialogue on business, trade and investment. In 2004, Euvin was recruited from McKinsey & Co., to join one of Africa's leading pan-African banks, Standard Bank, within Corporate & Investment Banking, where he focused on Acquisition Finance, initially based in Johannesburg and then, from 2005, in the New York office. As a New York based investment banker focused on emerging market companies, Euvin worked through an invaluable global learning curve, witnessing the ripple effect of the US financial crisis in 2007 and the risk, credit, organizational and leadership lessons this has for both developed and emerging market companies and regulators. He returned to South Africa from the USA in 2009 to head up the Risk Appetite & Credit Portfolio Management team for Standard Bank, covering a 17 country pan-African footprint across all personal and business banking product lines. In 2013, Euvin joined Barclays Africa Regional Management EXCO as the Head of Strategy, leading the development of the bank's strategy focused on execution for the 'Rest of Africa' across an 11 country pan-African portfolio. Named by Columbia University’s Journal of International Affairs as one of the ‘Five Faces of African Innovation and Entrepreneurship’, Euvin currently serves as a member of the World Economic Forum's Expert Network. As a Senior Fellow, his research is entitled The impact of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) on Africa. His faculty sponsor is Ricardo Hausmann, Professor of the Practice of Economic Development and Director, Center for International Development, at Harvard Kennedy School.

Udi Nisan (senior fellow 2011-2012)
Udi Nisan served in the last two years as the head of the Israeli National Budget Department. Prior to this position he served as the CEO of the Israeli Government Companies Authority. From 1999 to 2003 he served as the CEO of the Jerusalem Development Authority and during 1992 to 1999 he served in different positions in the Israeli National Budget Department. Dr. Nisan received a BA and MA in Economics and Business Management, a PhD in Economics and Public Policy from the Hebrew University, and undertook his post-doctoral research at Harvard Kennedy School. In the past twenty years he has taught courses on economics and public policy at the Hebrew University. Dr. Nisan’s research focuses on public economics: tax and budget policy, housing and planning policy, and regulation.

Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli (senior fellow 2014-2015)
Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli is the Founder of LEAP Africa, Co-Founder of AACE Food Processing & Distribution, an indigenous agro-processing company, and a partner at Sahel Capital, an advisory and private equity firm focused on the agribusiness sector in West Africa. She has 19 years of experience in international development and has worked and lived in West Africa, North America, and the Middle East. She started her career as a management consultant with McKinsey & Company, working in their Chicago, New York and Johannesburg Offices. In 2000, she returned to Nigeria to serve as the pioneer executive director of the FATE Foundation, a leading entrepreneurship development organization. She established LEAP Africa and NIA in 2002 and 2003 respectively. LEAP is a respected leadership development organization that has worked across Nigeria providing leadership training, and coaching to thousands of entrepreneurs, youth, teachers and community organizers. LEAP has also pioneered curriculum and published ten books on succession, ethics, governance and management. NIA empowers female university students in the Southeastern Nigeria to achieve their highest potential. She holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School (Class of 1999) and an undergraduate degree with honors in Multinational and Strategic Management from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She was recognized as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and received a National Honor – Member of the Federal Republic from the Nigerian Government. In 2011, she was listed as one of the 20 Youngest Power African Women by Forbes. In 2013, she was honored by the Global Fund for Women during their 25th Anniversary Celebration in San Francisco. She serves on numerous international and local boards including Nestle Nigeria, Cornerstone Insurance and USAID's Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid. As a senior fellow, Nwuneli will explore the role of social innovation and entrepreneurship in Africa as catalysts for sustainable transformation. Her faculty sponsor is Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice of International Development.

Patrick Okigbo (senior fellow 2020-2022)
Patrick O. Okigbo III is the Founder of Nextier, a public policy advisory firm and think-tank, focused on improving governance and development outcomes in Africa. Patrick started his career in Nigeria in 1998 with Diamond Bank Plc. before joining Accenture where he worked with financial services clients across West Africa. He was part of the team that advised on the first electronic payment processing platform in Nigeria. Patrick joined the Management Associate Programme at Citigroup in New York City in 2003 and worked in different capacities including providing services to the U.S. government. He left Citigroup as a Vice President in 2007 to join Transcorp Plc. in Nigeria as the Chief Financial Officer. He led efforts to restructure the firm’s finances and to start-up two new ventures in agro-processing and hospitality. In 2010, Patrick served as a Senior Special Assistant to the President of Nigeria; focused on reforming the country’s electricity industry. In 2011, he founded Nextier. The firm works with major government institutions and international development programmes. It is the local implementing partner on the two largest infrastructure-focused development programmes in Nigeria. It has grants from top foundations (MacArthur Foundation and Open Society Initiative for West Africa) to its support research and advocacy activities. Patrick has a Bachelor of Agriculture degree from the University of Nigeria, an MBA from Emory University, and an Executive Masters in Public Administration from the London School of Economics. He sits on the board of Tenece, a technology services firm with operations in four African countries and Dubai. He is a Global Advisor to Energy for Growth Hub, a Washington D.C.-based energy solutions institution. Patrick serves on several government committees and trusted advisor to several public officials. He writes a regular blog on public policy and is widely published in newspapers. Patrick is married to Awele and they are blessed with four children. As a Senior Fellow, Patrick’s research will be on Rebuilding the Falling House: Technology Innovations and Africa’s Renaissance. His faculty sponsor is John Haigh, Co-Director, Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, and Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Ioana Petrescu (senior fellow 2019-2022)
Ioana Petrescu is a Senior Fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government and the President of Simply Green, a Romanian environmental NGO. Dr. Petrescu is a former Romanian Finance Minister. While minister, she pursued policies to cut tax evasion and tax avoidance, promote financial transparency, improve tax compliance, lower the tax burden for businesses and keep fiscal discipline. She also served in the government as an economic adviser to the prime minister and head of his delivery unit, where she monitored the implementation of the prime minister’s priorities in procurement, employment, energy and tax compliance. She is an international consultant on issues such as tax reform, central government delivery and local public services and runs the Center for Leadership and Innovation at the National School of Political Science and Public Administration in Bucharest. In the past, she also served as an expert for the European Economic and Social Committee in Brussels. She was an Assistant Professor at University of Maryland and she holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard. She published in various academic journals and newspapers. Her 2017 book, Essays in Taxation and International Relations, analyzes issues such as flat taxation and government revenues. Ioana’s research project, Making Public Policy in Adolescent Democracies: Paths to Adulthood, explores good practices in the delivery of public goods and services in new democracies characterized by corruption and clientelism, low paid bureaucrats, poor institutions, frequent political turnover, unclear legislation, and little transparency. Her faculty sponsor is Jeffrey Frankel, James W. Harpel Professor of Capital Formation and Growth at Harvard Kennedy School.

Yair Pines (senior fellow 2019-2020)
Yair Pines is Deputy Director & Business Division Manager at the Israel Land Authority (ILA). The ILA is the government agency responsible for managing land in Israel, 93% of which it controls. In past senior positions in the Ministry of Finance’s (MoF) Budget Division (parallel to the US OMB), Yair, as Deputy Commissioner of Budgets, was instrumental in formulating policy for social ministries and in drawing up budgets of c. 200 billion shekels. His special interest lay in working to remove imbalances between private and public medicine, in alleviating poverty and a lack of socio-economic mobility among the most underprivileged and integrating them into Israel’s thriving economy, particularly people living in the country’s geo-social periphery, Israeli Arabs and the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community. He led on a number of government initiatives, in particular making more land available for its flagship Homebuyer’s Lottery Program and incentivizing developers to enter the public housing segment. In previous executive roles, Yair worked closely with all strata of government and in many cases represented the MoF in governmental committees on public policy. Also at the MoF, Yair coordinated real estate and planning domain budgets between the ILA, the national planning authority, and the government housing authority. His central role in prompting and implementing comprehensive reform of planning and construction licensing, and in cementing agreements between public and private entities, set the ball rolling in many of the most important national infrastructure projects now under construction in the country. Before turning his attention and his passion to social policy, Yair spent several years in the private sector, including with CPA firm PwC. His MA in Law and BA in Economics-Accounting are both from Bar-Ilan University. As a Senior Fellow, Yair aims to examine international experience on affordable housing and socio-urban development policies in order to create a more inclusive economy and promote reforms needed in Israel. His faculty sponsor is Tarek Masoud, Professor of Public Policy and Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations at Harvard Kennedy School.

Scott C. Ratzan (senior fellow 2018-2019)
Scott Ratzan has three decades of pioneering accomplishments in the U.S. and globally in health communication, health literacy, and strategic diplomacy. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Health Communication: International Perspectives, established in 1995 and is currently on the Board of Global Health for the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. Over the last five years at Anheuser-Busch InBev, he was the architect of a ground-breaking approach to help reduce harmful drinking. Termed the “Global Smart Drinking Goals,” the program is a ten-year, $1 billion multisectoral initiative, which included the creation of a Foundation with an independently led Board of which Dr. Ratzan was founding President. Prior to joining ABInBev, Dr. Ratzan was Vice President of Global Health at Johnson & Johnson for eleven years including time in Brussels as VP Government Affairs. Before his private sector engagement, he worked at the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in Washington DC, designing the framework for the Bureau of Global Health communication efforts. He launched his career in Boston spending a decade in academia as a professor and Founding Director of the Emerson-Tufts Masters Program in Health Communication. In addition to a number of publications in the health field, he is the co-author of the definition of health literacy adopted by the US Government and incorporated in the Affordable Care Act. Recently, he has served as Co-Chair of the UN Secretary General’s Every Woman Every Child Innovation Working Group, as Vice Chair of the Business Industry Advisory Council's Health Committee to the OECD, on the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Well-Being and Mental Health, and on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Board of Scientific Counselors, Office of Infectious Disease. Dr. Ratzan has an M.D. from the University of Southern California, an M.P.A. from the Harvard Kennedy School, and an M.A. in Communication from Emerson College. His academic appointments include Adjunct Professor at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Tufts University School of Medicine, and George Washington University School of Public Health. As Senior Fellow, his research project is titled “Advancing Health Sustainably: ‘Inspiring Smart Choices’ to Achieve Societal Well-being.” His faculty sponsor is Joseph Newhouse, John D. MacArthur Professor of Health Policy and Management at Harvard Kennedy School.

Demian Reidel (senior fellow 2019)
Demian Reidel served as Deputy Governor and member of the Board of the Central Bank of Argentina from 2015 until 2018. He was appointed as part of the new leadership of the Central Bank upon President Macri’s election. Dr. Reidel was a member of the Monetary Policy Committee, which for the first time in Argentina’s history designed and implemented an inflation target regime with a flexible exchange rate. As a member of the Board, he oversaw the Central Bank’s prudential oversight responsibilities, including regulation of financial institutions. During his tenure, Dr. Reidel also served as the representative of the Central Bank at the G20. In this role, he designed the priorities of the G20 Finance Track during Argentina’s presidency of the G20 in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance. Previously, Dr. Reidel co-founded and was a principal portfolio manager at QFR, a New York City-based global macro hedge fund specializing in FX, fixed income and credit investments. QFR grew over $3 billion in assets under management during his tenure. Before founding QFR, Dr. Reidel was a senior member of the Emerging Markets Research team at Goldman Sachs in New York City and, prior to that, he worked in a similar capacity at JP Morgan in New York City, London and Buenos Aires. Dr. Reidel was a Professor at Universidad Di Tella in Buenos Aires where he taught asset valuation in the Finance Masters Program. Dr. Reidel holds a PhD in economics from Harvard University in the fields of international economics and finance. He also holds an MS in Financial Mathematics from the University of Chicago and a BS and MS in Physics from Instituto Balseiro. Dr. Reidel’s Faculty sponsor is Professor Ken Rogoff, Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Economics at Harvard University.

Lisa A. Robinson (senior fellow 2012-2014)
Lisa A. Robinson specializes in the economic analysis of environmental, health, and safety regulations. In the spring of 2014, she taught a for-credit module in benefit-cost analysis at the Kennedy School (API-139m). She is a senior fellow at M-RCBG and affiliated with its Regulatory Policy Program, and also holds a research appointment at the Center for Risk Analysis and Center for Health Decision Science at the Harvard School of Public Health. She was previously a Principal at Industrial Economics, Incorporated, the Director of Policy, Planning, and Budget for the federal Institute of Museum Services, and an analyst at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. She is the President of the Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis and Risk Analysis. She received her Master in Public Policy degree from the Kennedy School. As a senior fellow, she is investigating how the costs and benefits of regulatory policies are distributed across demographic groups and the implications for decision-making. Her faculty sponsors are James K. Hammitt, Professor of Economics and Decision Sciences at the Harvard School of Public Health, and Richard Zeckhauser, Frank Plumpton Ramsey Professor of Political Economy.

Omar Robles (senior fellow 2021-2023)
Omar Robles is Managing Partner at Emerging Health LLC, a consulting firm dedicated to applying economic and strategic expertise to complex business and legal challenges in life sciences. Dr. Robles has consulted on numerous commercial litigations concerning prescription pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and dietary supplements. His engagements have concerned antitrust claims and intellectual property matters litigated in US federal and state courts, the US Patent Trial and Appeal Board, and Canadian courts. Dr. Robles’ research focuses on regulatory health policy, drug development, and competition in life sciences. His work has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics and the Journal of Health Economics. In addition, Dr. Robles routinely publishes articles in legal news sources as a life sciences expert and has contributed to multiple publications from the American Bar Association. He also holds a Lecturer position at the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health where he provides graduate instruction on regulatory science and drug development. He has previously taught economics and public policy at Harvard University, Georgetown University, and the University of Maryland-College Park. In 2010, Dr. Robles received the prestigious Joseph R. Levenson Memorial Teaching Prize for excellence in teaching from the Harvard Undergraduate Council. Dr. Robles received his B.B.A. in finance and economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, his M.B.A. from DePaul University, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University. As a Senior Fellow, his research will focus on the role of regulatory policy on competition in prescription pharmaceuticals. 

Christof Rühl(senior fellow 2019-2021)
Christof Rühl is an internationally renowned economist, specializing in macroeconomics and energy economics. He has a succinct track record in business, economic policy advice and academia, and is published and quoted widely in his fields. His most recent commercial expertise is in energy, specifically oil and gas, and in asset allocation, focused on global macro and geopolitical trends. He combines more than 20 years of experience in senior positions in world class companies. From 2014-18 Christof served as Global Head of Research at the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, creating and managing ADIA’s first global research team to provide economic, energy and geopolitical analysis to the Fund. Earlier, he was Group Chief Economist and Vice President of BP plc (2005-14), credited with a significant contribution to the global debate on energy, climate change, and the various links between energy and economic development. Christof joined BP from the world of global economic policy, having served at the World Bank (1998–2005) - including as the Bank’s Chief Economist in Russia and in Brazil - and at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD, 1996-98). He started his career as an academic economist, first as a Research Associate at the Universities of Bremen and Hohenheim in Germany; and from 1991-96, as an Assistant Professor at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA). Christof is a sought after lecturer and public speaker. He currently serves as independent board director and as a global advisor of companies in energy, banking and private equity. He is a German national. While an M-RCBG Senior Fellow, Christof's research will center on energy policy.

Eric Salama (senior fellow 2020-2022)
Eric Salama is a global business leader with a track record of transformation. He has recently stepped down as CEO of Kantar, one of the world’s leading research, insight, data and consulting companies after leading its carve-out from WPP and a sale of a majority stake to Bain Capital. During his 18 years as CEO the business grew to over $4bn of revenue, 30k employees, operating in all markets around the world and working with major multinationals and local giants – clients and partners such as Google, Facebook, Alibaba, Globo, BBC, Yilli, ITC, JBS, Coke, Unilever, Loreal, VW, Group M, Omnicom. The business is unique in combining survey and behavioural data at scale around the world and by 2020 had moved from being a collection of agency brands to going to market under a single brand and with a single P&L, Kantar. Prior to Kantar Eric served on the main board of WPP for almost a decade as the CEO of wpp.com and the Head of Strategy, working as part of the team which built it into the largest marketing services company in the world. Eric has served as a Trustee of the British Museum, a Director of UK Government Department DFID and a Governor of Birkbeck College London. On 1st July he will become Chair of leading UK Charity Comic Relief. He has presented extensively around the world in Government and Parliamentary forums, public conferences and client events. He was both a Chairman and a juror at Cannes Lions Festivals of Advertising. He worked for the Labour Party Front Bench Team on Foreign Affairs 1983-6, was appointed by Tony Blair to the UK Government Creative Industries Task Force in 1997 and served as an advisor to Gordon Brown in his roles as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Prime Minister from 2000 to 2010. While a Senior Fellow at M-RCBG, Eric will conduct work on data usage and data privacy with his project, Shaping the World’s Newest Human Right. His faculty advisor is Jim Waldo, Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice of Computer Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard.

Peter Sands (senior fellow 2015-2017)
Peter Sands was Group Chief Executive of Standard Chartered Bank from November 2006 to June 2015. He joined the Board of Standard Chartered PLC as Group Finance Director in May 2002, responsible for Finance, Strategy, Risk and Technology and Operations. Prior to this, Sands was Director and Senior Partner at worldwide consultants McKinsey & Co. Before joining McKinsey, he worked for the United Kingdom’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Sands is the lead non-executive board member of the Department of Health in the United Kingdom and the co-chair of the India UK CEO Forum. He holds a number of board memberships including the World Economic Forum and Lingnan University and is Governor of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. He graduated from Oxford University and holds and MPA from HKS (1988), where he was a Harkness Fellow. As a senior fellow, Sands’ research will explore a variety of topics related to banks and financial markets. His faculty sponsor is Richard Zeckhauser, Frank Plumpton Ramsey Professor of Political Economy.

Alexandra Schweitzer (senior fellow 2019-2022)
Alexandra Schweitzer is expert at leading complex new ventures and transformation initiatives from strategy through successful execution. She combines entrepreneurial passion and drive with the ability to navigate through large organizations and alliances, balancing mission and business discipline. Her systems perspective is grounded in deep senior leadership experience as a P&L owner, a product portfolio manager, a client services executive, and the head of departments and teams with multi-million-dollar budgets. Her health care sector experience spans payers, providers, state government, and specialized analytics and managed care organizations. Population health strategist and builder: Alexandra has built and led value-based integrated systems of care, including tools to address social determinants of health, in innovative accountable care and provider-payer organizations, including: i) A “partnership model” Medicaid ACO under the new Massachusetts delivery system reform program; ii) Iora Health, a venture capital-backed startup nationally known for its relationship-driven, technology-enabled care model, predominantly for Medicare Advantage members; and iii) The Tufts Health Plan Senior Care Options (SCO) program for dual eligible seniors, which she built and ran. Practical strategic planner: As a business leader, a consultant, and a hands-on not-for-profit board member, Alexandra has led the development of numerous mission-critical strategic plans. She emphasizes broad input from stakeholders, alignment of mission and financial goals, and a strong focus on execution to achieve results. Innovative board leader: Alexandra is the Board President of Goddard House, an assisted living residence in Brookline, MA, where she is driving a major organizational transformation to develop innovative programs serving isolated seniors in the Greater Boston community. As a LeadingAge board member, she initiated and led a cross-sector workgroup to promote tightly-integrated programs using affordable senior housing as a platform for health. She was the Board Vice Chair of the Visiting Nurse Association of Boston and led their strategic planning committee. Alexandra has a Master’s in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School and a B.A. in English and American Literature from Brandeis University. A lifelong learner, she has completed an executive MBA at Columbia University and certificates in strategic selling, large account management, and project management. Her research project as a senior fellow is entitled, Addressing Social Determinants of Health: Why Some Initiatives Thrive and Others Don’t. Her faculty sponsor is Dutch Leonard, George F. Baker, Jr. Professor of Public Management at Harvard Kennedy School, and Eliot I. Snider and Family Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

James Segel (senior fellow 2013-2015)
James Segel recently returned from serving for four years as Special Counsel to Congressman Barney Frank, then Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee (2007-2011). While there he was extensively involved in working on what became the Dodd-Frank Bill as well as the activities surrounding the financial crisis beginning in 2008. In addition, he worked extensively on banking, housing, insurance, municipal finance, and other issues within the jurisdiction of the House Committee on Financial Services. He served as the Chairman’s liaison to other Democratic members of the Committee; the entire Massachusetts Delegation; to Massachusetts governmental officials including the Governor’s office and the Mayors’ offices; and as liaison to national and Massachusetts businesses and advocacy groups. Segel began his professional career in the Massachusetts State Legislature as a State Representative from Brookline, served as chairman of Barney Frank’s first Campaign for Congress in 1980; and then served as the first Executive Director of the Massachusetts Municipal Association dealing with the response of cities and towns to Proposition 21/2 and other municipal finance, environmental, and labor issues. Following MMA, he served as of counsel at Hale and Dorr in Boston (now Wilmer Hale) for ten years and then as a partner at Smith Segel Ruddock. Segel returned to Smith Segel Ruddock after his service in Washington. He has served on a number of elected and appointed boards and commissions including gubernatorial appointments to the State Tax Reform Commission; the Commission on State Aid to Cities and Towns; Special Commission on Environmental Operations (the Tsongas Commission); the Commission on the Disposal of Low level Radioactive Waste; and the Chairman of the Mayor’s Commission on Healthcare which led to the merger of Boston City Hospital and University Hospital in Boston. In addition, Segel served as Secretary to the Coordinating Committee (the Vault ) representing leading businesses in Boston; President of Temple Israel in Boston; President of the Jewish Community Relations Council; Chairman of the Advisory Committee to WBUR; Treasurer of the Old North Church Foundation: and a fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society. He graduated cum laude in government in 1967 from Harvard College; received his MPA from the Kennedy School at Harvard in 1976; and his JD from Boston College Law School in 1972. As a senior fellow, he will research the passage of TARP by the US Congress. His faculty sponsor is David King, Senior Lecturer in Public Policy.

Merav Shaviv (senior fellow 2019-2020)
Merav Shaviv was employed as Deputy Director General in the Council for Higher Education (CHE) in Israel from 2003 until 2019, first as Deputy Director General for Budgeting, and then as Deputy Director general for Planning and Policy. Through her positions she participated in the formulation of multi-year strategic plans for the Israeli higher education system. She also initiated and took part in establishing policies and programs in many key areas, including increasing access to the higher education for minorities, a new program for making higher education accessible in the periphery of Israel, a program for raising the number of students in high tech degrees, an evaluation of the need for new faculty in medicine, a reexamination of the structure of the higher education system, and more. As part of her duty, Merav was involved with many professional committees including the strategic forum of the Israeli government in the Ministry of the Prime Minister of Israel, interministerial committees on the changing job market, interdisciplinary forum for research infrastructure, and more. From 1995 to 2003, Merav was employed at the Budget Division of the Ministry of Finance in charge of the Labor and Social Affairs Budgets. In that position, she mainly initiated and led broad structural reforms in the labor market, including a new regulation to bring the unemployed back into the workforce (similar to the “Wisconsin Work” program) and a new regulation for reducing the scale of employment of foreign workers in Israel. Merav holds a BA in Economic and Statistics from the Hebrew University and MBA in Business Administration from Bar-Ilan University. As a Senior Fellow her research will focus on the accessibility of Israeli Arabs to Higher Education system, a holistic program which she formulated and which has thus far been a great success, and which will hopefully have a profound positive success on Israeli society at large. Her faculty sponsors are Tarek Masoud, Professor of Public Policy and Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations at Harvard Kennedy School, and Richard Light, Professor of Teaching and Learning at Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Paul Sheard (Senior Fellow 2018-2020)
Paul Sheard is a veteran central bank watcher and markets economist, who has written and spoken widely on QE and unconventional monetary policies. He most recently was Vice Chairman of S&P Global, after serving as Executive Vice President and Chief Economist and earlier Executive Managing Director and Chief Economist of Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services. Previously, he held chief economist positions at Nomura Securities and at Lehman Brothers and was Head of Japan Equity Investments at Baring Asset Management. Earlier, Sheard was Lecturer in Economics at the Australian National University (ANU) and Osaka Gas International Cooperation Associate Professor of Economics at Osaka University, and was Visiting Scholar and Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics at Stanford University and Foreign Visiting Scholar at the Bank of Japan. Sheard is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on the New Economic Agenda and was a member of the WEF’s Global Agenda Council on the International Monetary System (2010-2012). He served on committees of the Japanese Government’s Economic Deliberation Council, as an appointee of Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto (1997-98) and as an appointee of Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi (1998-1999), and was a member of the oversight board of the Japanese Government’s Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (2001-2006). From 2003 to 2010, he was a non-executive director of ORIX Corporation. In 2006, Sheard was recognized by Advance as one of a 100 Leading Global Australians. Sheard is on the board of the Foreign Policy Association and is a member of the Bretton Woods Committee, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Economic Club of New York. He speaks regularly at conferences around the world, and his views on the global economy and policy issues are frequently cited in the international press. Author or editor of four books and numerous academic articles, Sheard’s 1997 book in Japanese, Mein Banku Shihon Shugi no Kiki: Biggu Ban de Kawaru Nihongata Keiei (The Crisis of Main Bank Capitalism: How Japanese-style Management Will Change with “Big Bang”), won the Suntory-Gakugei Prize in the Economics–Politics Division. Sheard received a BA (Hons) from Monash University and a Master of Economics and PhD in Japanese Economy from the ANU. While a Senior Fellow, he will work on a project called, “Rethinking and Retooling the Macroeconomic Policy Framework.” Paul Sheard was an M-RCBG Senior Fellow 2018-20. His faculty sponsor is Jason Furman, Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy.

Douglas H. Shulman (senior fellow 2013-2014)
Doug Shulman stepped down as the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in November 2012 after serving in that position since 2008. As head of the IRS, he led one of the largest financial institutions in the world with approximately 100,000 employees, over 200 million customers, a $12 billion budget, and over $2.5 trillion of annual transactions. During his tenure, the IRS played a major role in the nation’s economic recovery efforts by delivering about $300 billion—or 40% of the money of the Recovery Act—through the tax system. Shulman was intimately involved in the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, as most of the financial information and transactions resulting from the law flow through the tax system. In the face of increasing globalization, Shulman stepped up IRS activity on a variety of international tax issues, including a historic breakthrough in offshore tax evasion. He served as the Chair of the OECD FTA, the global body of his counterparts, from 2009-2012. Also under Shulman's direction, the IRS transformed its use of data analytics to drive improvements in its operations. He launched and completed a major modernization of IRS’s core technology, allowing the IRS to process tax returns on a daily cycle, rather than weekly batch cycle, resulting in faster refunds and better customer service for all 140 million individual taxpayers. He also focused on employee engagement and performance, and under his leadership the agency improved significantly in the government-wide Best Places to Work in Government survey. Shulman came to the IRS from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA, previously NASD), where he served as Vice Chairman and before that President of Markets, Services & Information. After joining NASD in 2000, he oversaw its stock market operations and led the multi-billion dollar sale of the NASDAQ Stock Market and the divestiture of the American Stock Exchange, directed NASD’s entry into the fixed income markets through the launch of TRACE (an industry-wide bond market reporting facility and service), played a lead role in acquiring new regulatory services and restructuring the company, modernized technology operations, and led entry into new business segments. Earlier in his career, he held a number of positions including working at the consulting firm AT Kearney, helping to co-found Teach for America, serving as Vice President of Darby Overseas Investments, and starting a technology and innovation focused advisory firm. He also served on a number of boards of directors, including the World Federation of Exchanges and the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp (DTCC). He holds a BA from Williams College, an MPA from Harvard Kennedy School, and a JD from Georgetown University Law Center. As a senior fellow, he will conduct research on data and analytics, with an emphasis on big data. He will also offer a study group and give guest lectures in areas of financial markets, health care reform, and technology innovation.

Myriam Assa Sidibe (senior fellow 2018-2020)
Dr. Myriam Assa Sidibe is one of the world’s leading experts on brands that drive health outcomes through mass behavioural change. From within Unilever, she has created a movement to change the handwashing behaviours of one billion people, the single biggest hygiene behavior change programme in the world, and conceived and established the multiple award-winning UN-recognized Global Handwashing Day–now celebrated in over 100 countries. Myriam’s approach to pushing boundaries and challenging the status quo has been pivotal to leading a paradigm shift in the way public private partnerships for health/well-being are managed and funded, leading her to be recognized as one of the top 10 Intrapreneurs in the world. Her foresight in establishing Lifebuoy’s social mission has been replicated across Unilever as an example of a best practice for brands looking to positively impact the world whilst driving market share. Over the past 20 years, she has worked in over 20 countries in Asia and Africa for both the public sector and private spheres, arguing for a more transparent relationship between the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors. She has advocated for businesses to gain growth and profits from engagement in social and health issues in order to build more sustainable, effective interventions, and is a regular commentator in the media on this subject. Myriam regularly presents her work on WaSH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene) and Nutrition at key public health events (Scaling Up Nutrition global network, Women Global Health Leaders). She is equally recognized in the creative world (speaker at Health Lions in Cannes) and is a TED speaker on The Simple Power of Handwashing. Myriam is a trustee of WaterAid, the world’s largest civil society organization on Water and Sanitation and a commissioner for the Lancet on the future of health in Africa. Myriam is from Mali and holds a doctorate in Public Health from London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a Masters in Water and Waste Engineering from Loughborough University, UK. She was trained as an Agricultural and Environmental Engineer at McGill University, Canada. Her research is on how brands that have public health ambitions can be better supported in order to enhance their impact in the world. Her faculty sponsor is Leemore Dafny, the Bruce V. Rauner Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

Christopher Smart (senior fellow 2016-2018)
Christopher Smart, PhD, CFA, has spent the last six years in the Obama Administration as a senior policymaker for international economic affairs. As Special Assistant to the President at the National Economic Council and the National Security Council, he was principal advisor on trade, investment and a wide range of global economic issues. From 2009-13, he was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Treasury, where he led the response to the European financial crisis and designed U.S. engagement on financial policy across Europe, Russia and Central Asia. Before entering government, Dr. Smart was Director of International Investments at Pioneer Investments where he managed top-performing Emerging Markets and International portfolios. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, he worked in Moscow, advising Russian government agencies on economic policy and financial market reform. Earlier in his career, he was a journalist in St. Petersburg, Florida and Paris, France. Dr. Smart is also the author of The Imagery of Soviet Foreign Policy and the Collapse of the Russian Empire (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1995) and numerous analytical and opinion articles. He earned a B.A. in History from Yale University and a PhD in International Relations from Columbia University. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation and speaks French, Russian and some German. In Spring 2016, he was a Resident Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics, where he led a study group entitled “Money, Power and the Politics of International Financial Policy.” At M-RCBG, he will be exploring how the data analytics that now drive rapid gains in industrial efficiency can reduce financial risk and help tap new pools of capital. His faculty sponsor is Robert Glauber, Adjunct Lecturer on Public Policy.

Chris Skidmore (senior fellow 2021-2023)
Rt Hon Chris Skidmore MP has been the Member of Parliament for Kingswood, near Bristol, and is a former Minister attending Cabinet who has served across four departments in the UK Government. He was appointed to the Privy Council in November 2019. Most recently, he was twice Minister of State for Universities, Research, Innovation and Skills (2018-19, 2019-2020). In 2019, he was also appointed interim Energy and Climate Change Minister, attending Cabinet. In this role, Chris signed the UK commitment to achieve net zero carbon emissions into law by 2050 and helped to secure the UK's bid to host the UN COP26 conference taking place in Glasgow in November. He has also served as Minister of State for Health and Minister for the Constitution in the Cabinet Office (2016-2018), was Chair of the Conservative Party's Policy Review and Vice Chairman of the party for policy, Political Private Secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, and served as Deputy Chairman of the Number 10 Policy Board under former Prime Minister David Cameron. Chris was first elected as Member of Parliament for Kingswood in 2010, winning the seat with the second highest swing from the Labour party to Conservative in the General Election. He has increased his vote share in the three subsequent General Elections, from 40% to over 56% of the vote. Chris studied history to postgraduate level at Christ Church, Oxford, and previously taught history at Bristol University. He continues to pursue his initial career as an historian, writing Tudor and Medieval History— his books include Richard III: Brother, Protector, King (2017, published in the US as Richard III: England's Most Controversial King, 2019), Bosworth: The Birth of the Tudors (2013, published in the US as The Rise of the Tudors, 2014), Death and the Virgin (2010) and Edward VI: The Lost King of England (2007). He has also co-authored two books with the current Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Business Secretary and International Trade Secretary— After The Coalition (2011) and Britannia Unchained (2012).  While at M-RCBG, Chris will pursue a project, Mission Zero: Charting a Course or Running Aground? Choices and consequences for delivering in net zero in an uncertain world by 2050. His faculty advisor is Richard Zeckhauser, the Frank P. Ramsey Professor of Political Economy at Harvard Kennedy School. 

Wake Smith (senior fellow 2019-2022)
Wake Smith is a Lecturer in Yale College, where he teaches what is understood to be the world’s first undergraduate survey course on climate engineering. The core of that course will be published in book form in March 2022 by the Cambridge University Press under the title Pandora’s Toolbox: The Hopes and Hazards of Climate Intervention. As a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, he has published papers on the aeronautics, costs, and deployment logistics of stratospheric aerosol injection as well as on the proper governance of research into these technologies. He finished his business career in private equity with New York based New State Capital. He previously served as: Chairman and President of Pemco World Air Services; Chief Operating Officer of Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings; and President of the flight training division of Boeing. He holds a BA in History from Yale and an MBA from Harvard. His faculty sponsor is Joseph Aldy, Professor of the Practice of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Philippe Tordoir (senior fellow 2020-2022)
Philippe Tordoir is a senior executive with general, finance, and business development managerial experience, in international settings, both at headquarters and operational levels, in the energy sector. He is currently Head of Acquisitions, Investments and Financial Advisory in charge of North America, Brazil, the Middle East, Africa and the regulated natural gas business in France for ENGIE. ENGIE is a French-based global energy leader, 170 000 employees, focusing on accelerating the zero-carbon transition by providing turnkey low carbon, energy-efficient solutions and services to global companies and local authorities. During his 15-year experience with ENGIE, he held several senior positions, including CEO of hydro power plants in Bolivia, CFO of a major electric utility in Peru, Board member of ENGIE companies in Chile and as a Director of Business Development Oversight, overseeing global investments of the Group. Before joining ENGIE, he served in several positions at ABB, a global technology supplier for utilities, industry, transportation and infrastructure. He graduated with a degree in electrical-mechanical engineering and a Master of Engineering in Electric Power Systems from Université de Liège in Belgium, a Master of Science in Thermal Power from Cranfield University in the UK, and an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US. As an M-RCBG Senior Fellow, his research will focus on a framework for utilities and government to think about the role of natural gas in the electricity / heat generation mix for the medium and long term. His faculty sponsor is William Hogan, Raymond Plank Research Professor of Global Energy Policy at Harvard Kennedy School.

Edwin M. Truman (senior fellow 2021-2023) 
Edwin (Ted) M. Truman was a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) from 2001 until December 31, 2020. In 2013 he became a non-resident senior fellow. Before joining PIIE, he was assistant secretary for international affairs at the U.S. Treasury from 1998 to January 2001. He returned to the Treasury as counselor to the secretary from March 2009 to May 2009. Prior to his service at the Treasury, he was director of the division of international finance at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from June 1977 until October 1998 and economist on the Federal Open Market Committee (1983 to 1998). He joined the staff of the Federal Reserve in 1972 while on leave from Yale University where he was on the faculty of the economics department (1967 to 1974). He received his PhD in economics from Yale in 1967, his B.A. from Amherst College in 1963, and an honorary L.L.D. from Amherst in 1988.  He is an international macro-economist having published on international economic policy coordination, international financial crises, exchange rates, sovereign wealth funds, anti-money laundering, inflation targeting, the International Monetary Fund, and European economic integration. In addition to teaching at Yale, he taught off and on at Amherst College and Williams College (2006 to 2018).  He served on numerous international working groups and as an alternate member of the Board of Directors of the Bank for International Settlements (1994 to 1998).  As a senior fellow at M-BCBG, he will continue his research on the international coordination of economic policies. His faculty sponsor is Robert Lawrence, Albert L. Williams Professor of International Trade and Investment, Harvard Kennedy School. 

Paul Tucker (senior fellow 2013-2015)
Sir Paul Tucker is chair of the Systemic Risk Council, and a 2015-2016 fellow at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. From 2009 to late 2013 he was Deputy Governor at the Bank of England, having joined the Bank in 1980. He was a member of all of the Bank of England's statutory policy committees: the Monetary Policy Committee, Financial Policy Committee (vice chair), Prudential Regulatory Authority Board (vice chair), as well as of the Court of Directors. Internationally, he was a member of the steering committee of the G20 Financial Stability Board, and chaired its Committee on the Resolution of Cross-Border Banks in order to solve the “too big to fail” problem. He was a member of the board of directors of the Bank for International Settlements, and was chair of the Basel Committee for Payment and Settlement Systems from April 2012. He is a member of the Board of the Financial Services Volunteer Corps, a director at Swiss Re, a Visiting Fellow of Nuffield College Oxford, a member of the Advisory Council of the AQR Asset Management Institute at the London Business School, and a Governor of the Ditchley Foundation.

Paul Verdin (senior fellow 2014-2016)
Paul Verdin is the Chair in Strategy & Organization at Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management (ULB, B) and Professor of Strategy & International Management at K.U.Leuven (B). Previously at IESE Business School (E), he has also been Associate Dean at TiasNimbas (Tilburg Univ., NL) and “Distinguished Visiting Professor” at INSEAD (F) where he has been on the faculty for up to 20 years. He has also been associated with the Berlin School for Creative Leadership (D) since its launch. After Master’s Degrees in Law and in Economics, both summa cum laude from K.U.Leuven (B), he obtained the M.A. and Ph.D. in Economics (Industrial Organization) at Harvard University, where he was a Teaching Fellow with Nobel Laureate Prof. Tom Schelling and former Secretary of Labor Prof. Robert Reich at Harvard Kennedy School. He combined this with work with McKinsey & Co., Merrill Lynch Capital Markets, the IMF, and the World Bank. He directs executive seminars and strategy workshops, and consults on strategy processes for a wide range of local and global companies, established multinationals as well as small and medium sized companies, across a variety of industries and particularly in the financial sector. A regular keynote speaker on top management conferences, he also serves as a non-executive board member of companies and non-profit institutions. His widely cited research focuses on the critical role of innovative company strategy and organization for long term value creation, and how it interacts with industry dynamics and competence- and resource-based competition. As a senior fellow, Verdin will examine the strategic imperative of value creation as the foundation of sustainable strategy and economic growth, and implications of this imperative for government economic policies. His faculty sponsor is Richard Zeckhauser, Frank Plumpton Ramsey Professor of Political Economy.

Antonio Weiss (senior fellow 2017-2019)
Antonio Weiss served as Counselor to the Secretary at the United States Department of the Treasury, where he worked on domestic and international issues related to financial markets, regulatory reform, job creation, consumer finance, and broad-based economic growth. Since joining the Obama Administration, he served as the point-person on the debt crisis in Puerto Rico, working closely with members of Congress to pass legislation to allow an orderly restructuring of the Commonwealth’s debt. This has been called the most significant piece of economic legislation in 2016. Mr. Weiss led Treasury’s debt management team that oversees the Nation’s finances and initiated the most comprehensive review of the Treasury market in nearly two decades. Mr. Weiss advised the Secretary on the implementation of financial regulatory reform and policy issues related to financial stability, including the work of the Financial Stability Oversight Council’s review of potential threats to financial stability arising from asset management products and activities. Mr. Weiss coordinated the Department’s housing finance policy efforts and oversaw the Department’s housing programs aimed at assisting struggling homeowners, which received additional funding during his tenure at Treasury. Mr. Weiss also led Treasury's review of developments in fintech, including the publication of a white paper on marketplace lending, which made several recommendations to enhance consumer and small business protections in this emerging sector. In recognition of his achievements at Treasury, Mr. Weiss was presented the Alexander Hamilton Award, which is the Department’s highest honor. Prior to joining Treasury, Mr. Weiss served in various leadership roles at Lazard in New York and Europe, including as Global Head of Investment Banking. He has advised many of the world’s leading corporations on their most significant strategic decisions. From 2000 to 2009, Mr. Weiss was based in Paris, where he was Vice Chairman of European Investment Banking following the introduction of the single currency and during the financial crisis. Mr. Weiss is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He has participated in numerous public policy forums on topics ranging from financial regulation to housing finance reform, and co-authored a Center for American Progress report, which recommended a more progressive tax regime and a balanced approach to long-term debt reduction. He has been a Trustee of various non-profit organizations and was Publisher of the leading literary quarterly, The Paris Review. Mr. Weiss earned his bachelor’s degree from Yale College and M.B.A. degree from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar and Loeb Fellow. He is married with three sons. His faculty sponsor is Richard Zeckhauser, Frank Plumpton Ramsey Professor of Political Economy at Harvard Kennedy School.

Simon Winter (senior fellow 2015-2017)
Simon Winter is TechnoServe’s Senior Vice President of Development. He is responsible for leading strategy, thought leadership, and business and program development. He is also responsible for managing and incubating innovative programs, including around capital access for SMEs. Previously he was Regional Director for Africa. He joined TechnoServe in 2003. Winter was a management consultant with McKinsey and Company (1998-2003) during which he co-led the firm's international development practice. He worked as an economic planner for the Botswana government, and a development consultant in Southern Africa. He started his career with Barclays Bank plc in the UK, Cote d'Ivoire and Australia. Winter is a founding Executive Committee member of the Aspen Network for Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE), a Board Member of Root Capital, a steering committee member of the Initiative for Smallholder Finance, and a member of the Transformation Leaders Network of the World Economic Forum’s New Vision for Agriculture. Winter originates from the UK and holds a PhD in economics from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1998, which focused on the development of the manufacturing sector in Zimbabwe. During his Senior Fellowship, Winter’s research will focus on understanding how we can change the global food system so that it can produce enough to feed the expected growing population in the face of climate change and produce positive impacts on workers and farmers across the system (especially in developing countries). His faculty sponsor is William C. Clark, Harvey Brooks Professor of International Science, Public Policy, and Human Development.

Neal S. Wolin (senior fellow 2014)
Neal S. Wolin was the Deputy Secretary of Treasury from May 2009, when he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate, until September 2013. He was the longest serving Deputy Treasury Secretary in U.S. history. Wolin served as Acting Secretary of the Treasury from January 25 to February 28, 2013. As Deputy Secretary, Wolin served as the Treasury Department’s Chief Operating Officer and supervised all Treasury bureaus and domestic and international policy offices as well as its management, legal, public affairs and congressional affairs functions. He played a key role in formulating and executing the U.S. government’s response to the financial crisis of 2008-2009 – including its economic recovery and financial reform plans. President Obama said Wolin’s “deep knowledge and excellent judgment helped us prevent a second Great Depression, pass tough new Wall Street Reform, strengthen our financial system, foster growth here at home, and promote economic development around the world.” Prior to his confirmation as Deputy Secretary, Wolin served in the Obama White House as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Counsel to the President for Economic Policy. Before joining the Obama Administration, Wolin was President and Chief Operating Officer of the property and casualty insurance companies of The Hartford Financial Services Group. He served as Executive Vice President and General Counsel of The Hartford from 2001 to 2007 and oversaw the company’s law, government affairs, communications, marketing and tax functions. From 1999 to January 2001, Wolin served as General Counsel of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. He served as the Deputy General Counsel of the Treasury from 1995 to 1999. He previously served in the Clinton White House as the Deputy Legal Adviser to the National Security Council and as Executive Assistant to the National Security Advisor. Wolin has also served as Special Assistant to three Directors of Central Intelligence. Before joining the federal government, Mr. Wolin practiced law in Washington, D.C. with the law firm Wilmer, Cutler and Pickering. He served as law clerk for United States District Court Judge Eugene H. Nickerson in the Eastern District of New York. Mr. Wolin was appointed by President Clinton to be a member of the President’s Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States. Prior to returning to government, he was on the boards of the University of Hartford, Appleseed, the RAND Corporation’s Institute for Civil Justice and the International Center for Research on Women. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and of the bar in Illinois, Connecticut and the District of Columbia. He received a B.A. degree in history, summa cum laude, from Yale College; a Master of Science in Development Economics from the University of Oxford; and a J.D. from Yale Law School where he was a Coker Teaching Fellow in Constitutional Law. As a senior fellow, Wolin will be conduct research and engage with students on topics related to financial services regulatory reform and fiscal issues, including the debt limit and tax reform.

Howard L. Wolk (senior fellow 2013-2015)
Howard L. Wolk is Co-President of The Cross Country Group (CCG), a privately-held organization consisting of technology-enabled emergency assistance, direct marketing and customer service businesses serving global corporate clients in the automotive, insurance, real estate and financial services industries. The company enjoys strategic relationships with global corporations such as General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Liberty Mutual, Progressive, Bank of America, Citibank and many others. CCG has approximately 2500 associates in North America and Europe and serves over 75 million of its clients’ customers. He began his career at the New York City law firm of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, where he participated in a number of corporate finance, merger and acquisition and joint venture transactions. After Simpson Thacher, he joined the White House as Associate Counsel for the transition team during the Clinton Administration, vetting candidates for positions in the Departments of Treasury and Justice and several independent agencies. He also served as a member of Vice President Gore’s Task Force on Reinventing Government. He received B.A. and B.S.Ec. (Wharton School) degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, a J.D. degree from Columbia Law School and an M.P.A. degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He is a member of the Massachusetts, New York and DC Bar Associations, is a Trustee of the Beth Israel-Deaconess Medical Center, a member of the Board of Combined Jewish Philanthropies and serves on the boards of several other non-profit and social entrepreneurship organizations. As a senior fellow, he will study the nature of American entrepreneurship. His faculty sponsor is Dick Cavanagh, Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy.

Longmei Zhang (senior fellow 2021-2023)
Longmei Zhang is a senior economist at the International Monetary Fund and served as the Citi Visiting Chair in International Finance at Schwarzman College, Tsinghua University, before joining M-RCBG. From 2017 to 2020, she served as the IMF Deputy Resident Representative for China. In this capacity, she provides policy advice, co-leads the analytical work of the IMF Beijing office, and engages with academia and think tanks. Before that, she worked in the IMF Asia and Pacific Department based in Washington, D.C., focusing on macroeconomic forecasting, broader China rebalancing, and issues on high savings. She has also worked extensively on regional issues in the Asia Pacific and was engaged in IMF program negotiations and reviews in Romania. Longmei has published research in a wide range of areas, including long-term growth/middle-income trap, macroprudential policies, corporate leverage, capital flows and asset prices, digital economy, and fintech. She also co-edited the book “The Future of China’s Bond market,” which provides a comprehensive analysis of various segments in China’s bond market and reform needed. She was named a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum in 2019 and is a member of the Global Future Council on China. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Goethe University Frankfurt, a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Konstanz, and a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Shanghai Jiaotong University. As an M-RCBG Senior Fellow, her research will focus on how China’s increasing financial integration and the rise of the Renminbi will reshape the international financial architecture and implications for policy makers. Her faculty sponsor is Jeffrey Frankel, James W. Harpel Professor of Capital Formation and Growth at Harvard Kennedy School.