In 2017, Inside FRASER featured a list of the women who have served on the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) since its inception. In the intervening years, more women have joined the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and become presidents of the regional Federal Reserve Banks.
In 2022, we wrote a new post—More Women of the FOMC—to bring the content up to date. Since then, even more women have joined the committee, which is more diverse than ever.[1] For this latest update, we’ve included current members of the committee below, with the most recent additions at the top, and added some of the Fed’s lesser-known pioneering women at the end of the list.
Women of the FOMC, 2024
Adriana D. Kugler: Board member (September 2023-present). She is the first Latino[2] to serve on the Board of Governors and the FOMC. View her statements and speeches at federalreserve.gov. You can also browse her research at the Georgetown University website and view a video of her nomination hearing. As a Board governor, Kugler is a voting member of the FOMC.
Sushmita Shukla: First vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (March 2023-present). As the first vice president of the New York Fed, which has a permanent voting seat on the FOMC, Shukla is an alternate member of the FOMC. (Alternate members step in when the designated voting member cannot attend a committee meeting. Learn more in this blog post from the St. Louis Fed.)
Lorie Logan: President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas (August 2022—present). Logan is the first woman to be named president of the Dallas Fed (although two other women previously served as interim Dallas Fed presidents). Prior to her current role, Logan was the first woman to serve as manager of the System Open Market Account (SOMA) (2020-2023). View her speeches from her time at the New York Fed on FRASER and her speeches as president at dallasfed.org. In 2024, Logan is a nonvoting member of the FOMC.
Lisa D. Cook: Board member (May 2022–present). She is the first Black woman[3] to serve on the Board and the FOMC. Governor Cook was reappointed to the Board in September 2023 for a term ending in 2038. View her statements and speeches on FRASER and at federalreserve.gov. You can also browse her research on her site and read the transcript of her confirmation hearing. As a Board governor, Cook is a voting member of the FOMC.
Susan M. Collins: President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston (July 2022–present). She is the first Black woman[4] to serve as president of a Federal Reserve Bank and only the second Black president in the Federal Reserve System, after Atlanta Fed president Raphael Bostic. View her speeches and research at bostonfed.org. In 2024, Collins is an alternate member of the FOMC.
Michelle W. Bowman: Board member (November 2018–present). Bowman was reappointed in 2020 for a term ending in 2034. View her statements and speeches on FRASER and at federalreserve.gov and read the transcript of her confirmation hearing.
Mary C. Daly: President of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (October 2018–present). Daly is the first woman to serve as San Francisco Fed president and the first openly gay woman[5] to serve as president of any of the Federal Reserve Banks. She was also the first woman to be director of research at San Francisco (2017-2018). View her statements and speeches at frbsf.org and read minutes of her first FOMC meeting as a member of the committee on FRASER. In 2024, Daly is a voting member of the FOMC.
Loretta J. Mester: President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland (June 2014–present). View her speeches at clevelandfed.org and read minutes from her first FOMC meeting on FRASER. In 2024, Mester is a voting member of the FOMC. She will retire later this year.
Many other women participate in the work of the Federal Open Market Committee. Each Reserve Bank’s first vice president (the chief operating officer) attends FOMC meetings, as do research directors, who oversee each Bank’s team of economists. In 2024, more than half of the Banks have women serving as first vice president, and two more women serve as research directors.
Some FOMC Women’s Firsts
In addition to the many historical firsts listed in our 2017 post, the following women were also trailblazers at the FOMC:
Sheila Tschinkel and Alicia H. Munnell: The first women to be Reserve Bank research directors at the Atlanta (1984-1996) and Boston Feds (1984-1993), respectively. Research directors at each Federal Reserve Bank serve as economic advisors to their Bank’s president, lead a staff of economists and analysts, and attend FOMC meetings.
Joan Lovett: Manager for domestic operations, System Open Market Account (1993-1994). In the 1980s and 1990s, there were two SOMA managers: one for domestic and one for foreign operations. The SOMA manager, an officer of the New York Fed, attends FOMC meetings and handles the execution of transactions for the Fed’s portfolio of securities as directed by the FOMC.
Helen Holcomb: Interim president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas for two terms (November 2004-April 2005 and March-September 2015). In this role, she was the first woman to lead the Dallas Fed.
Marie C. Gooding: Interim president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta (March 1, 2017, to June 4, 2017), making her the first woman to lead the Atlanta Fed.
Kathleen O’Neill: Interim president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (August 2023 to April 2024). In this role, she was the first woman to lead the St. Louis Fed. View her speeches from her term as interim president on FRASER.
Although this post highlights those who participate in the Fed’s highest-profile work, many women serve and have served in leadership roles across the Federal Reserve System and central banking, leading Banks’ work in community development, information technology, banking supervision, regional outreach, and much more.
[1] The women of today’s FOMC have been recently honored by a range of media and organizations, from Barron’s magazine to the Girl Scouts of America, for their pioneering work.
[2] Kyle Campbell. “Kugler sworn in as Fed governor, brings board to full strength.” American Banker, September 13, 2023.
[3] Associated Press. “Senate Approves Lisa Cook as First Black Woman on Federal Reserve Board of Governors.” National Public Radio, May 10, 2022.
[4] Christopher Rugaber and Mark Herz. “Federal Reserve Bank of Boston Names Susan M. Collins as First Black President.” GBH News, February 9, 2022.
[5] Binyamin Appelbaum. “She Dropped Out of High School. Now She’s President of the San Francisco Fed.” New York Times, September 14, 2018.
© 2024, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect official positions of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis or the Federal Reserve System.
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