Loretta J. Mester

Mester was born in Baltimore, Maryland on October 24, 1958.[2] She is married to George Mailath, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania.[3]

Mester has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Barnard College, Columbia University in Mathematics and Economics and a Masters and Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University. She was also a National Science Foundation Fellow at Princeton.

Mester worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, where she was Executive Vice President, Director of Research and Chief Policy Advisor. She began work with the Federal Reserve Bank (in Philadelphia) in 1985 as an economist, thereafter being promoted to Senior Vice President, Director of Research, Executive Vice President. Mester has taught in both the MBA and BA business courses at Wharton and the Ph.D. finance course at New York University.

Mester became the President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland on June 1, 2014. She was the 11th president and CEO of Cleveland’s Fourth District Federal Reserve Bank. A year later she took on the additional position of “alternate voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee.” [4]

Mester is an adjunct professor of finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a fellow at the Wharton Financial Institutions Center. Other positions Mester holds include: Greater Cleveland Partnership director, a trustee of both the Cleveland Clinic and the Musical Arts Association, a founding director of the Financial Intermediation Research Society, a member of the advisory board of the Financial Intermediation Network of European Studies (FINEST), the American Economic Association, the American Finance Association, the Econometric Society, and the Financial Management Association International.[5]

Mester has published articles in various journals on the subjects of central banking, economics and finance. She is co-editor of the Journal of Financial Services Research and the International Journal of Central Banking. She is an associate editor of: the Journal of Financial Intermediation; Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking; Journal of Economics and Business; Research in Banking and Finance; and Journal of Financial Stability.

Mester is a director of the Greater Cleveland Partnership, a trustee of the Cleveland Clinic, a trustee of the Musical Arts Association (Cleveland Orchestra), a founding director of the Financial Intermediation Research Society, and a member of the advisory board of the Financial Intermediation Network of European Studies (FINEST). She is also a member of the American Economic Association, the American Finance Association, the Econometric Society and the Financial Management Association International.[4]