Hilary Hoynes

Hilary Hoynes is a former member of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth’s Steering Committee, a professor of economics and public policy, and holds the Haas Distinguished Chair in Economic Disparities at the University of California, Berkeley, where she also co-directs the Berkeley Opportunity Lab. Her research focuses on poverty, inequality, food and nutrition programs, and the impacts of government tax and transfer programs on low-income families. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Social Insurance, and a Fellow of the Society of Labor Economists. She currently serves on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Building an Agenda to Reduce the Number of Children in Poverty by Half in 10 Years. Previously, she was a member of the Federal Commission on Evidence-Based Policy Making. Hoynes received her Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University and her undergraduate degree in economics and mathematics from Colby College.

Janet L. Yellen

Janet L. Yellen, a former member of Washington Center for Equitable Growth’s Steering Committee, is the 78th secretary of the treasury of the United States. She was sworn in on January 26, 2021. Prior, she was a distinguished fellow in residence with the Economic Studies program at The Brookings Institution. She is the former chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Prior to her appointment as chair, Yellen served as vice chair of the Board of Governors, taking office in October 2010. She is professor emerita at the University of California, Berkeley, where she was the Eugene E. and Catherine M. Trefethen Professor of Business and professor of economics, and has been a faculty member since 1980. She served as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from 1994 to 1997, and then left the Federal Reserve to become chair of the Council of Economic Advisers through August 1999. She also served as president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco from 2004 to 2010. She is a member of both the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Yellen hold a degree in economics from Brown University and a Ph.D. in economics from Yale University.

Robert Solow

Robert M. Solow, a former member of Equitable Growth’s Steering Committee, was the institute professor emeritus and professor of economics emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1987, Solow was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his important contributions to theories of economic growth. He began teaching economics at MIT in 1949, becoming professor of economics in 1958 and professor emeritus in 1995. In the 1950s, Solow developed a mathematical model illustrating how various factors can contribute to sustained national economic growth. Contrary to traditional economic thinking, he showed that advances in the rate of technological progress do more to boost economic growth than capital accumulation and labor increases. He served on the Council of Economic Advisers in 1961–62 and was a consultant to that body from 1962–68. From the 1960s on, Solow’s studies helped persuade governments to channel their funds into technological research and development to spur economic growth. Solow received a B.A., an M.A., and a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Raj Chetty

Raj Chetty, a former member of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth’s Steering Committee, is the William A. Ackman Professor of Economics at Harvard University. He is also the director of the Opportunity Insights (formerly the Equality of Opportunity Project), which uses “big data” to understand how we can give children from disadvantaged backgrounds better chances of succeeding. Chetty’s research combines empirical evidence and economic theory to help design more effective government policies. His work on topics ranging from tax policy and unemployment insurance to education and affordable housing has been widely cited in academia, media outlets, and congressional testimony.

Chetty received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2003 and is one of the youngest tenured professors in Harvard’s history. Before joining the faculty at Harvard, he was a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University. Chetty has received numerous awards for his research, including a MacArthur Genius Fellowship and the John Bates Clark medal, given to the economist under age 40 whose work is judged to have made the most significant contribution to the field.

Melody Barnes

Melody Barnes is professor of practice at the University of Virginia, co-director for policy and public affairs for the Democracy Initiative at the the University of Virginia, a co-founder and principal of MB² Solutions LLC, and a former member of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth’s Steering Committee. Barnes serves as an independent director on the Boards of Ventas, Inc. (NYSE:VTR); Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corporation (NYSE:BHA); on the Public Policy Advisory Board at Uber; the Marguerite Casey Foundation; and Year Up. Barnes also chairs the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions and the Opportunity Youth Incentive Fund. From January 2009 until January 2012, she was assistant to the president and director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. Barnes earned her B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she graduated with honors in history, and her J.D. from the University of Michigan.

Lisa Cook

Lisa D. Cook is a former member of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth’s Steering Committee and a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Prior to her appointment to the Board, she was a professor of economics and international relations at Michigan State University. Cook is the first African American woman and first woman of color to sit on the Board. Prior to her work at Michigan State University, she was on the faculty of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, deputy director for Africa research at the Center for International Development at Harvard University, and a national fellow at Stanford University. Cook was the first Marshall Scholar from Spelman College and received a second B.A. in philosophy, politics, and economics from Oxford University. She earned a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, with fields in macroeconomics and international economics.

Laura Tyson

Laura D’Andrea Tyson is the distinguished professor of the Graduate School at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former member of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth’s Steering Committee. She is the former faculty director of the Berkeley Haas Institute for Business and Social Impact, which she launched in 2013.  She served as dean of London Business School from 2002–2006 and as dean of the Berkeley Haas School of Business from 1998–2001. Tyson is a member of the U.S. Department of State Foreign Affairs Policy Board. She was a member of President Barack Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness and a member of the president’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. During the Clinton administration, she served as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers (1993–1995) and as director of the National Economic Council (1995–1996). She serves on three corporate boards and several advisory boards for several nonprofit and for-profit organizations. Tyson holds a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.A. in economics from Smith College.

John Podesta

John Podesta is a founder of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth and a former member of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth’s Steering Committee. Currently, he is senior advisor to the President for Clean Energy Innovation and Implementation at the White House.

Under his initial leadership, Equitable Growth launched as a start-up housed within the Center for American Progress, which he founded in 2003. Podesta left Equitable Growth to serve as counsel to President Barack Obama before becoming the chair of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. He was also a member of the U.N. Secretary General’s High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda. Prior to founding CAP in 2003, Podesta served as White House chief of staff to President William J. Clinton. Additionally, Podesta served as co-chair of President Obama’s transition team and has held numerous positions on Capitol Hill. Podesta is a graduate of Knox College and the Georgetown University Law Center, where he is currently a visiting professor of law. He also authored The Power of Progress: How America’s Progressives Can (Once Again) Save Our Economy, Our Climate and Our Country.

Janet Currie

Janet Currie is the Henry Putnam professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University, the director of Princeton’s Center for Health and Well-Being, and a former member of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth’s Steering Committee. She also directs the Program on Families and Children at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies of Sciences, a fellow of the Econometric Society, and a fellow of the Society of Labor Economists. She was elected vice president of the American Economics Association in 2010 and president of the Society of Labor Economists in 2014. She has served as editor of the Journal of Economic Literature and on the editorial board of the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and has also served several other journals in an editorial capacity including the Journal of Health Economics, the Journal of Labor Economics, and the Journal of Public Economics. Her research focuses on the health and well-being of children. Her current research focuses on socioeconomic differences in child health, and on environmental threats to children’s health. She holds a B.A. and an M.A. in economics from the University of Toronto and a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University.

Heather Boushey

Heather Boushey is co-founder of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, which was launched in 2013. She served as the President & CEO and a Steering Committee member from 2013–2020. Currently, she serves as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Biden administration. She is one of the nation’s most influential voices on economic policy and a leading economist who focuses on the intersection between economic inequality, growth, and public policy. Her latest book, Unbound: How Economic Inequality Constricts Our Economy and What We Can Do About It (Harvard University Press), which was called “outstanding” and “piercing” by reviewers, was on the Financial Times list of best economics books of 2019. She is also the author of Finding Time: The Economics of Work-Life Conflict, and co-edited a volume of 22 essays about how to integrate inequality into economic thinking called After Piketty: The Agenda for Economics and Inequality.

The New York Times has said that Boushey “is at the forefront of a generation of economists rethinking their discipline” and called her one of the “most vibrant voices in the field.” Politico twice named her one of the top 50 “thinkers, doers and visionaries transforming American politics.” Boushey writes regularly for popular media, including The New York TimesThe Atlantic, and Democracy Journal, and she makes frequent television appearances on Bloomberg, MSNBC, CNBC, and PBS. She previously served as chief economist for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential transition team and as an economist for the Center for American Progress, the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and the Economic Policy Institute.