Archives: Team Members

MINOUCHE SHAFIK is an economist, policymaker, central banker and higher education leader who has spent over three decades in leadership roles across a range of prominent international financial institutions, national governments and academic institutions. She currently serves as Chief Economic Advisor to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and chair of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

She started her career at the World Bank where she became the youngest-ever vice president at the age of 36, turned around a $50 billion portfolio of infrastructure projects, worked on the institution’s first-ever report on the environment, and advised governments in post-communist Eastern Europe. Minouche Shafik’s tenure as Permanent Secretary of the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development coincided with the department being ranked the best performing in government and helped secure the UK’s commitment to giving 0.7% of GDP to fight poverty in the poorest countries in the world. As Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, she navigated the turbulence surrounding the European debt crisis and the Arab Spring, led training of thousands of policy makers around the world, and was responsible for the IMF’s $1 billion administrative budget and $10 billion pension fund.

As deputy governor of the Bank of England, she served on all the Bank’s policy committees, led work on fighting misconduct in financial markets and managed the central bank’s balance sheet of around $600 billion. Minouche Shafik was an academic leader for seven years serving as president of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and Columbia University where she was the first woman to lead both institutions. Her focus was on driving academic excellence, improving student experience and raising substantial philanthropic support. 

She holds a life peerage and is a crossbench member of the House of Lords, received a knighthood for services to the global economy, an honorary fellowship of the British Academy and of St. Antony’s College at Oxford University, has six honorary doctorates, and published numerous books and articles.

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 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 80 partners and seven 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 over $5 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), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New Visions for Public Schools, the Partnership for New York City, Princeton University, and the Center for American Progress. Mr. Effron is a former Member of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board (2021-2024). 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 a Professor of Law at Yale Law School with a secondary appointment at the Yale School of Management in the Finance Department. She is also the President and Co-Founder of the Budget Lab at Yale. Previously, Natasha served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy and later as a Counselor to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen at the United States Treasury Department. Her work focused on narrowing the gap between the taxes owed by the American public and those collected by the Internal Revenue Service. Prior to her government service, Sarin was a Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and the Wharton School. Her research centers on public finance and financial regulation, with work on tax policy, household finance, insurance, and macroprudential risk management. Her scholarship has been covered in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Financial Times, among other publications. Natasha is a Washington Post contributing columnist and a frequent guest on CNBC’s Squawk Box.

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 Opinion writer for The New York Times and the Economic Analyst for MS NOW’S Morning Joe. He previously 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.

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 the Co-founder and CEO of Foundry-Logic, an energy services holding company, and an Institute Innovation Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Deese was previously Director of the White House National Economic Council from 2021-2023, where he coordinated the economic agenda of the Biden-Harris Administration and advised President Biden on domestic and international economic policy. Deese was President Biden’s primary policy negotiator for the infrastructure, semiconductor, and clean energy legislation passed in 2021 and 2022.

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. 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.

From 2017-2020, Deese was the global head of sustainable investing at BlackRock, where he worked to drive greater focus on climate and sustainability risk in investment portfolios and created investment strategies to help accelerate the low-carbon transition. Deese also worked at the Center for Global Development, where he co-wrote the book Delivering on Debt Relief. His writings have appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, and Foreign Affairs.

Deese received his B.A. from Middlebury College and his JD from Yale Law School.

ROB PORTMAN’S career in public service has 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.

Former U.S. Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) co-founded the Friends of Switzerland Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2003 and later expanded it to the U.S. Senate. He served as the caucus’s co-chair during his time in Congress before retiring from the Senate in January 2023. 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 has made ten trips to Ukraine since the Revolution of Dignity in 2014 and is a key advocate for U.S. support of Ukraine against Russia’s unprovoked war of aggression.

Portman currently serves as the Founder and Chair of the Portman Center for Policy Solutions at the University of Cincinnati and is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow in the Practice of Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute. He also serves on the Board of Directors of The Procter and Gamble Company, the Bechtel Group, Inc. and The Atlantic Council, and as an advisory board member of other non-profits.

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 Squawk Box, CNBC’s signature morning program. He is also the founder and editor-at-large of DealBook, an online daily financial report published by The Times that he started in 2001.

Sorkin is the author of “1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History–and How It Shattered a Nation” (Viking, 2025), which was an instant New York Times bestseller and was named a BEST BOOK OF 2025 by TIME, The Economist, The Financial Times and Bloomberg. “It is one of the best narrative histories I’ve read,” The Wall Street Journal book review wrote. The Financial Times described it as “a work of true scholarship.”

Sorkin is also the author of “Too Big to Fail: How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System — and Themselves” (Viking, 2009), which chronicled the events of the 2008 financial crisis. The book won the 2010 Gerald Loeb Award for Best Business Book, and was shortlisted for the 2010 Samuel Johnson Prize and the 2010 Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award. The book spent more than six months on The New York Times Best Seller list in hardcover and paperback. The book was adapted as a movie for HBO Films in 2011. Sorkin was a co-producer of the film, which was nominated for 11 Emmy Awards.

Sorkin is also co-creator of the drama series “Billions” on Showtime.

Sorkin is one of the preeminent interviewers in the nation, known for his incisive, nuanced long-form conversations with the biggest newsmakers in the world, from Elon Musk to Lebron James to Kim Kardashian and Hillary Clinton. In 2022, he won the Emmy award for “Outstanding Live Interview.”

Sorkin began writing for The Times in 1995 under unusual circumstances: he hadn’t yet graduated from high school.

Sorkin is a graduate of Cornell University.