Lael Brainard formerly served as the Director of the National Economic Council, the Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve Board, and Under Secretary of the Department of Treasury, where she received the Alexander Hamilton Award. At the National Economic Council and, before that, at the Federal Reserve, Lael Brainard helped achieve resolutions of the debt limit impasse of 2023, the regional banking crisis of 2023, and the COVID financial crisis that protected households and small businesses and restored growth, and she was deeply engaged in macro, fiscal, and monetary policymaking, as well as investment policy on semiconductors, AI, and energy. Brainard served as Administrative Governor and Chair of Federal Reserve committees where she oversaw national payment operations, including the launch of FedNow, a new digital instant payments system, as well as personnel, finance, and operations for the Board and System. She has also served as chair of the Financial Stability Board Standing Committee on Assessment of Vulnerabilities and as G7 sherpa for the United States. Brainard has operated at high levels of economic diplomacy, including in bilateral negotiations with China and the Euro area, and in G-20 and G-7 financial negotiations, where she was extensively engaged in global financial stabilization and recovery for the Global Financial Crisis, the Euro area debt crisis, and the Asian financial crisis. Dr. Brainard was an associate professor of applied economics at MIT Sloan School of Management. She founded the Global Economy and Development program at the Brookings Institution. She received her doctorate in economics at Harvard University, where she was a National Science Fellow. She has also received a White House Fellowship. She is a Distinguished Fellow at the Georgetown Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy. As an M-RCBG Senior Research Fellow, Lael Brainard will pursue a research project on what lessons we can draw for economic policy from the pandemic shock. Her faculty advisor is Jason Furman, Aetna Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy jointly at Harvard Kennedy School and the Department of Economics at Harvard University.