Bloomberg Línea — The United States Senate confirmed Adriana Kugler to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Thursday with a vote of 53 to 45. Kugler, of Colombian descent, will be the first Hispanic appointed to that role in the central bank’s 109-year history, after having been nominated by President Joe Biden as part of his efforts to increase diversity within the monetary authority.
Her appointment comes a day after the Senate confirmed Lisa Cook as the first Black woman on the Fed’s board with a 14-year term. The upper chamber of Congress also approved the arrival of Philip Jefferson as the institution’s second Black vice president.
Kugler’s nomination this year followed years of insistence by Democratic Senator Bob Menendez for President Biden to appoint a Hispanic to the Fed board. “Not to have a voice there that ultimately can present that perspective has been a tremendous insult to the community,” the senator had argued.
Who Is Adriana Kugler?
Although she was born in the United States, Kugler has Colombian parents, and part of her early academic education took place in Bogotá, the capital of the Andean nation. Her father was also an economist who worked with the World Bank, and her brother, Maurice, is currently a professor of public policy at George Mason University.
The Colombian-American economist has served as the Executive Director of the World Bank Group for the United States since May 2022, a position confirmed by the US Congress with broad support. Before that role, she served as Chief Economist at the U.S. Department of Labor during the Barack Obama administration (2011-2013).
To take on the executive role at the World Bank Group, Adriana Kugler activated her leave of absence from Georgetown University, where she has been a professor of public policy and economics since 2010. She also served as Vice-Provost for Faculty (2013-2016), according to her official profile on the World Bank website.
Furthermore, she was the President-Elect of the Business and Economic Statistics Section of the American Statistical Association (2019-2020) and a member of the Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy (STEP) at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2019-2022). She also served on the Technical Advisory Committee for the Bureau of Labor Statistics (2016-2022).
A significant portion of her expertise and academic and professional contributions are related to the labor market, sustainability, and social inclusion, areas that will be crucial in Federal Reserve discussions if the U.S. job market starts to weaken.
For her research on the impact of government policies and regulations on labor markets, she received the “John T. Dunlop Outstanding Scholar Award 2007 from the Labor and Employment Relations Association” and the “2010 Best Paper Award for Globalization, Regulation, and Development from the Global Development Network,” as noted by the World Bank.
- Includes information sourced from Bloomberg.
