Sarah Bloom Raskin

Sarah Bloom Raskin is the Colin W. Brown Distinguished Professor of the Practice at Duke Law School, where she teaches Climate Change and Financial Markets;  Law and Financial Anxiety;  Business Associations;  and Big Bank Regulation.  Sarah served both as the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Treasury and as Governor of the Federal Reserve Board.

As the second-in-command of the U.S. Treasury, Sarah oversaw the entire Treasury Department and its various agencies and departments. She is known for her pursuit of innovative and equitable solutions to economic challenges, as well as for a focus on the resilience of the country’s critical financial infrastructure.   

Earlier, Sarah was a governor of the Federal Reserve Board and a member of the Federal Open Market Committee, where she helped conduct the nation’s monetary policy and promote financial stability.   She focused both on the macro performance of the economy in light of widening heterogeneity of income and wealth, and on the micro contours of economic insecurity in households and communities.  She also served as Commissioner of Financial Regulation for the State of Maryland from 2007 to 2010.  She and her agency were responsible for regulating Maryland’s financial institutions during the height of the Great Recession.

Sarah’s public-facing work focuses on economic resilience. She has a deep understanding of the origination and management of systemic risks from diverse sources such as financial instruments, supply chains, pandemics, and climate events, as well as their distributional and inequitable impacts.

Sarah is a leading and early voice in understanding climate change as it pertains to the economy. Her courage was evident when she stood for confirmation to return to the Federal Reserve Board, in the face of concerted attacks by the American Petroleum Institute  opposing the nomination of persons who consider climate change’s role in the economy.  In a letter to President Biden at the time, she wrote that “[a]ddressing the transition of the economy as it grapples with the effects of climate change is critical to the future of the American economy“.

Her current work – internationally, nationally, regionally and at the state level —  focuses on creating a climate resilient economy and illuminating the contours of the decarbonization transition.  Her public statements include  “Climate Change and the Precautionary Imperative“(Green Swan Conference, 2020), “Bearing Witness to the Resilience is of the American Economy; Why Climate Change Matters“ (Trinity Wall Street, 2022) and “Changing the Climate of Financial Regulation“ (Project Syndicate, 2021).  In the midst of the pandemic, she was part of the Regenerative Crisis Response Committee, a set of convenings focused on the transmission of  exogenous supply shocks like extreme weather events and oil price volatility. 

Sarah also was named as Co-Chair by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to examine the recognition and accountability of net zero pledges by the private sector.

Sarah received her B.A. in Economics from Amherst College and her J.D. from Harvard Law School.