Lisa Cook

Some lesser Known Facts About Lisa Cook

• Lisa Cook grew up in Milledgeville, Georgia.

• As a child, she participated in the desegregation of schools in Georgia and still has physical scars from an attack by segregationists when she enrolled in an all-white school.

• Cook earned a B.A. in Physics and Philosophy with a gold medal from Spelman College in 1986, where she was named a Harry S. Truman Scholar.

• Later, she earned another B.A. in philosophy, Politics, and Economics in 1988 from St Hilda’s College, Oxford as Spelman’s first Marshall Scholar. Later, she did her master’s degree in philosophy at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Senegal.

• After a mountain climbing trip to Mount Kilimanjaro with an economist, Cook considered seriously pursuing a PhD in economics. Cook earned her PhD in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1997, studying under the guidance of Barry Eichengreen and David Romer. Her dissertation focused on the underdevelopment of the banking system in czarist and post-Soviet Russia.

• In 1997, Lisa Cook started her professional career as a college professor. From 1997 to 2002, she worked as a visiting assistant professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and Harvard Business School.

• She was also the deputy director of Africa Research at Harvard’s Center for International Development.

• In 2000 and 2001, Lisa worked as a senior adviser on finance and development in the U.S. Treasury’s Office of International Affairs through a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship.

• From 2002 to 2005, she was a National Fellow and Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

• In 2005, Cook advised the Nigerian government on its banking reforms and the government of Rwanda on economic development.

• Lisa Cook joined Michigan State University as an assistant professor in the Economics and International Relations department. Later in 2013, she became a tenured associate professor.

• From August 2011 to August 2012, she served as a Senior Economist in the Barack Obama Administration’s Council of Economic Advisers.

• In an interview, Lisa Cook explained that early in her career, her research primarily focused on international economics, particularly the Russian economy. However, she later expanded her research to examine economic growth through the lens of the economic history of African Americans. Her research showed that violence against African Americans under Jim Crow laws resulted in a lower-than-expected number of patents filed. Along with other economists, she has compiled a long-term database on lynching in the United States.

• Since 2016, she has been directing the American Economic Association’s Summer Program for underrepresented minority students. She became a member of the American Economic Association’s Executive Committee in 2019.

• In November 2020, Cook was appointed as a volunteer member of the Joe Biden presidential transition Agency Review Team to assist with transition efforts related to the Federal Reserve.

• Cook is regarded as one of the few prominent black female economists and has attracted attention within academia for her efforts in mentoring black women and advocating for their inclusion in the field of economics.

• For her research in African-American history and innovation economics, she became one of the few prominent Black female economists.

• On January 14, 2022, Joe Biden nominated Cook to serve on the Federal Reserve Board. She was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on May 10. She received a 50-50 vote; she got a tie-breaking vote from Kamala Harris.

• Cook took the Federal Reserve Board of Governors’ office on May 23, 2022, and became the first Black woman to serve on the board.

• In May 2023, Biden re-nominated Cook for a full 14-year term. Her nomination was confirmed by the Senate on 6 September 2023, by a 51–47 vote.

  

• In 2023, Cook was also awarded with Joint Center Louis E. Martin Great American Award.

  

• On 25 August, after a few days of Bill Pulte’s mortgage fraud allegation against Lisa Cook, President Donald Trump announced that he had fired Cook from her position, saying that her conduct was deceitful and criminal.”

• Later that day, Cook responded with a statement that,

“President Trump purported to fire me ‘for cause’ when no cause exists under the law, and he has no authority to do so.”