| Lael Brainard | |
|---|---|
| Lael Brainard | |
| Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office April 20, 2010 |
|
| President | Barack Obama |
| Preceded by | David H. McCormick |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1962 |
| Nationality | United States |
| Alma mater | Harvard University |
Lael Brainard (born 1962) is the United States Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs in the administration of President Barack Obama. She previously was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution from 2001 to 2009, and served as the vice president and director of the Global Economy and Development program from June 2006 to March 16, 2009. Brainard was confirmed by the United States Senate to her current post on April 20, 2010.[1][2]
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Brainard is an alumna of the George School class of 1979, a boarding school in Newtown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Brainard received masters and doctoral degrees in Economics from Harvard University, where she was a National Science Foundation Fellow. She graduated with highest honors from Wesleyan University with a degree from the College of Social Studies. She is the recipient of a White House Fellowship and a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship, a Marshall Scholar elect, and a member of the Wesleyan University Board of Trustees, Council on Foreign Relations, and Aspen Strategy Group.
Brainard served as Associate Professor of Applied Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where her publications made important contributions on the relationship between offshore production, trade, and jobs; the measurement of structural and cyclical unemployment in the US economy; and strategic trade policy. Brainard has also worked at McKinsey & Co. advising corporate clients on strategic challenges and on microenterprise in West Africa.
Brainard served as Deputy National Economic Adviser and Chair of the Deputy Secretaries Committee on International Economics during the Clinton Administration. As Deputy Director of the National Economic Council, she helped build a new White House organization to address global economic challenges such as the Asian financial crisis and China's WTO entry. As the US Sherpa to the G8, she helped shape the 2000 G8 Development Summit that for the first time included leaders of the poorest nations and laid the foundations for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria. She had been mentioned as a likely U.S. Trade Representative in the Obama administration.[3]
On March 23, 2009, President Obama nominated Brainard to serve as Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs, to replace David H. McCormick, whose term had ended with the end of the Bush administration.[4][5]
On November 18, 2009, the New York Times reported that Senator Charles Grassley, the chairman and ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, had cleared the way for her Senate confirmation as Undersecretary of the Treasury for International Affairs. Reuters News Service reported on December 23, 2009 that the Senate Finance Committee had approved Brainard to become the "Treasury Department's top global diplomat, a job that would give her a key role in the bid to push China toward a flexible currency."[6]
On April 19, 2010, the Senate voted 84-10 for cloture for Brainard's nomination.[7] The Senate confirmed her in a 78-19 vote on April 20, 2010.
Brainard has since served as the principal policy advisor to Secretary Geithner on international economic matters at the Treasury Department. Treasury describes her role as advancing the Administration’s agenda of strengthening U.S. leadership in the global economy to foster growth, creating economic opportunities for Americans, and addressing transnational economic challenges, including development and climate change.[8] Brainard is the highest-ranking female Treasury official in American history, and plays a critical policy role as the most important financial diplomat in the Administration’s efforts to sustain recovery from the financial crisis and strengthen global growth. [9]
Brainard is married to Kurt Campbell, the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.[10]
Brainard is co-editor of Too Poor For Peace? (2007); co-editor of Offshoring White Collar Work (2006); editor of Transforming the Development Landscape: the Role of the Private Sector (2006) and Security by Other Means: Foreign Assistance, Global Poverty and American Leadership (2006); and coauthor of The Other War: Global Poverty and the Millennium Challenge Corporation (2004). On March 23, 2009 she was nominated as Under-Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs by President Barack Obama.
Select recent publications include “Services Offshoring, American Jobs, and the Global Economy,” with Robert E. Litan, Perspectives on Work (Winter 2005); “Reassessing National Security,” with Michael O’Hanlon, in Alice Rivlin and Isabel Sawhill, eds., Restoring Fiscal Sanity (2004); “Building Common Ground on Trade Demands More Than a Name Change,” with Hal Shapiro, The George Washington International Law Review, 2003; “Compassionate Conservatism Confronts Global Poverty,” The Washington Quarterly, Spring 2003; “The Implications for the Global Economy of America’s Campaign against Terrorism,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs, July 2002; and “Are U.S. Multinationals Exporting U.S. Jobs?” with David Riker, in David Greenaway and Douglas Nelson, eds., Globalization and Labour Markets (Elgar, 2001).