Archives: Team Members

MINOUCHE SHAFIK is the 20th President of Columbia University in the City of New York and Professor of International and Public Affairs at the School of International and Public Affairs. She is an economist, policymaker, and higher education leader who has spent over three decades in leadership roles across a range of prominent international and academic institutions.  From 2017 to 2023 she was President and Vice Chancellor of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), a world-leading center for research and teaching in the social sciences. Before her tenure at LSE, Shafik served as Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, where she led work on fighting misconduct in financial markets and managed a balance sheet of about $600 billion; Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, navigating turbulence surrounding the European debt crisis and the Arab Spring; Permanent Secretary of the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development, where she helped secure the UK’s commitment to giving 0.7% of GDP in aid and focused on fighting poverty in the poorest countries in the world; and the youngest-ever Vice President of the World Bank, where she worked on the institution’s first-ever report on the environment, led work on infrastructure and private sector investment, and advised governments in post-communist Eastern Europe. She is a trustee of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Shafik received her BA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, MSc from LSE, and DPhil from St Antony’s College, Oxford.  She holds a life peerage and membership of the House of Lords, a damehood for services to the global economy, an honorary fellowship of the British Academy, and several honorary degrees. She is married to Raffael Jovine, a molecular biologist, with whom she has two college-aged children and three adult stepchildren.

JOHN H. COCHRANE  is the Rose-Marie and Jack Anderson Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His publications include the books The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level and Asset Pricing. He has written articles on monetary policy, inflation, dynamics in stock, bond, option and foreign exchange markets, and their relation to  business cycles, macroeconomics, health insurance, time-series econometrics, financial regulation, and other topics. He writes occasional Op-eds, mostly in the Wall Street Journal, blogs as “the Grumpy Economist” at https://www.grumpy-economist.com/ and as part of the Hoover Goodfellows video/podcast with H.R. McMaster and Niall Ferguson.  Cochrane is also a Senior Fellow of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), Professor of Finance and Economics (by Courtesy) at Stanford GSB, a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and former director of its Asset Pricing program, and an Adjunct Scholar of the CATO Institute. He is a past President and Fellow of the American Finance Association, and a Fellow of the Econometric Society. He has been an Editor of numerous journals including the Journal of Political Economy. Awards include the Bradley Prize, the TIAA-CREF Institute Paul A. Samuelson Award for Asset Pricing, the Chookaszian Endowed Risk Management Prize, the Faculty Excellence Award for MBA teaching and the McKinsey Award for Outstanding Teaching. Previously, Cochrane was the AQR Capital Management Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and before that at its economics department. Cochrane earned a Bachelor’s degree in Physics at MIT, and a Ph.D. in Economics at the University of California at Berkeley.  Outside of academic and economic pursuits, Cochrane is a competition sailplane pilot, and enjoys cycling, windsurfing, skiing, and other outdoor activities.

BLAIR W. EFFRON is cofounder of Centerview Partners, a leading independent investment banking and advisory firm with offices in New York, London, Los Angeles, Palo Alto, Paris, and San Francisco. The firm’s 75 partners and six hundred professionals provide assistance on mergers and acquisitions, financial restructurings, general advisory, valuation, and capital structure to companies, institutions, and governments. Since its founding in 2006, the firm has advised in nearly $4 trillion in transactions and ranks among the most active banking firms globally in strategic advisory. The firm works with public and private companies across a range of sectors including the consumer, energy, financial, general industrial, health care, media, retail, technology, and telecommunications industries.  Mr. Effron serves on the boards of trustees of the Council on Foreign Relations (vice chairman), Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New Visions for Public Schools, the Partnership for New York City, and Princeton University. He also sits on the advisory board of the Hamilton Project, an economic policy initiative affiliated with the Brookings Institution, and is a Member of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.  Effron holds a BA from Princeton University and an MBA from Columbia Business School.  He resides in New York with his wife Cheryl and has three children.

NATASHA SARIN is an Associate Professor of Law at Yale Law School with a secondary appointment at the Yale School of Management in the Finance Department.  Previously, she served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy and later as a Counselor to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen at the United States Treasury Department, where her work focused on narrowing the gap between the taxes owed by the American public and those collected by the Internal Revenue Service.  Before joining the Biden Administration, she was a Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and the Wharton School.  Her work has received both academic and popular press attention and has been covered by various media outlets, including The New York Times, The Economist, and the Financial Times, among other publications. She is currently a contributing columnist for The Washington Post. Prior to joining the faculty at Penn, she earned a JD from Harvard Law School; a PhD in Economics from Harvard University; and a BA in Ethics, Politics, and Economics from Yale University.

STEVEN RATTNER is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Willett Advisors LLC, which manages the personal and philanthropic investment assets of Michael R. Bloomberg. In addition, he is a Contributing Writer for the Op-Ed page of The New York Times and the Economic Analyst for MSNBC’s Morning Joe. Previously, Mr. Rattner served as Counselor to the Secretary of the Treasury and led the Obama Administration’s successful effort to restructure the automobile industry, which he chronicled in his book, Overhaul: An Insider’s Account of the Obama Administration’s Emergency Rescue of the Auto Industry. Until February 2009, Mr. Rattner was Managing Principal of Quadrangle Group LLC, a private investment firm that under his leadership, had more than $6 billion of assets under management. Before forming Quadrangle in 2000, Mr. Rattner was with Lazard Frères & Co., where he served as Deputy Chairman and Deputy Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Rattner joined Lazard Frères in 1989 as a General Partner from Morgan Stanley, where he was a Managing Director. Before beginning his investment banking career in 1982 with Lehman Brothers, Mr. Rattner was employed by The New York Times for nearly nine years, principally as an economic correspondent in New York, Washington and London. Mr. Rattner has served as a board member or trustee of a number of public and philanthropic organizations including the Educational Broadcasting Corporation (Chairman), Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brown University (Fellow), Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City (Chairman), Brookings Institution and the New America Foundation. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Rattner graduated in 1974 from Brown University with honors in economics and was awarded the Harvey Baker Fellowship. Mr. Rattner is married to Maureen White, who is a Senior Fellow at the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and they have four children.

LUKE PARDUE is Policy Director at the Aspen Institute’s Economic Strategy Group (AESG). He obtained his PhD in economics from the University of Maryland and, before joining AESG, worked as an economist at Gusto, a small business payroll platform. Before Gusto, Luke held research positions at the US Census Bureau and Federal Reserve Board. His research focuses on finding policies and practices that help businesses, workers, and families thrive. His work and commentary have been featured in outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. Luke currently lives in Washington, DC.

BRIAN DEESE is an MIT Innovation Fellow, focusing on the impact of economic policies that strengthen the United States’ industrial capacity and on accelerating climate investment and innovation. Deese was formerly the Director of the White House National Economic Council, where he advised President Biden on domestic and international economic policy and coordinated the economic agenda of the Biden‐Harris Administration. A former senior advisor to President Obama, Deese was instrumental in engineering the rescue of the U.S. auto industry and negotiating the landmark Paris Climate Agreement. Deese is a crisis‐tested advisor with broad experience in accelerating economic prosperity, empowering working Americans, and harnessing the economic opportunities that come from building a clean energy economy and combating the climate crisis. Previously, Deese also served as the global head of sustainable investing at BlackRock, where he worked to drive greater focus on climate and sustainability risk in investment portfolios and create investment strategies to help accelerate the low‐carbon transition. During the Obama‐Biden Administration, Deese served as acting director of the Office of Management and Budget and deputy director of the National Economic Council. Deese received his B.A. from Middlebury College and his JD from Yale Law School.

ROB PORTMAN is a former US Senator from Ohio and a Distinguished Visiting Fellow in the Practice of Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute. Rob Portman’s career in public service spanned three decades and included service in three presidential administrations as well as two terms in the United States Senate and six terms in the United States House of Representatives. In the George W. Bush administration, he served in two cabinet-level jobs, as Director of the Office of Management and Budget as well as United States Trade Representative. Under President George H.W. Bush, he served as Associate Counsel to the President and Director, White House Office of Legislative Affairs. Known for his civility, successful bipartisan policymaking, work ethic, and grasp of a broad range of complex issues, over 220 of Portman’s bills were signed into law by Presidents Biden, Trump and Obama during his tenure in the Senate. He served as the lead Republican negotiator on the bipartisan infrastructure law that is making historic improvements to our nation’s roads, ports, rails, bridges, broadband and more. He played a key role in U.S. foreign policy through his seat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as co-chair and founder of the Senate Ukraine Caucus. He made ten trips to Ukraine since the Revolution of Dignity in 2014 and is a key advocate for congressional support of Ukraine against Russia’s unprovoked war of aggression. Portman currently serves as the Founder of the Portman Center for Policy Solutions at the University of Cincinnati and a Distinguished Visiting Fellow in the Practice of Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute. Rob was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he still lives today with his wife, Jane. Together they have three adult children: Jed, Will, and Sally.

ANDREW ROSS SORKIN is an award-winning journalist for The New York Times and a co- anchor of CNBC’s Squawk Box. Sorkin is also the founder and editor at large of DealBook, a news site published by the Times. He is the author of the best-selling book Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System and Themselves, which chronicled the events of the 2008 financial crisis. Sorkin co-produced an HBO adaptation of the book, which was nominated for 11 Emmy Awards. He is also co-creator of Showtime’s drama series Billions. He has won numerous journalistic honors, including two Gerald Loeb Awards, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and recently won an Emmy Award for “Outstanding Live Interview” for his interview with Adam Neumann, the founder of WeWork, at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit in 2021. He started writing for the Times in 1995, while still in high school.