Lisa Cook educational background and career journey: How this philosophy scholar became a US Federal Reserve governor
Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook has come under scrutiny following allegations of mortgage fraud made by a US housing official. On August 20, 2025, US President Donald Trump called for her immediate resignation via his social media platform,
Truth Social
. The accusations, which have not been confirmed, concern mortgage agreements on two properties—one in Michigan and another in Georgia.
Cook, who is serving a term on the US Federal Reserve Board of Governors until 2038, became the first Black woman to hold the position when she took office on May 23, 2022. Her academic and professional journey spans prestigious institutions, policy roles, and contributions to economic research.
Early education and academic foundations
Born in 1964, Lisa DeNell Cook grew up in Milledgeville, Georgia. She is the daughter of Payton B.
Cook, a Baptist hospital chaplain, and Mary Murray Cook, a nursing professor at Georgia College. As a child, she was involved in school desegregation efforts in Georgia and sustained physical injuries during that process. She is also a cousin of chemist Percy Julian.
Cook earned a BA in Physics and Philosophy, magna cum laude, from Spelman College in 1986 and was named a Harry S. Truman Scholar. She became Spelman's first Marshall Scholar and went on to read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) at St Hilda's College, Oxford, completing her second BA in 1988.
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She also took postgraduate courses in philosophy at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Senegal.
Shift to economics and doctoral research
Cook shifted her focus to economics after a Mount Kilimanjaro hiking trip with an economist. She later earned a PhD in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1997. Her dissertation, supervised by Barry Eichengreen and David Romer, examined the underdevelopment of the banking system in czarist and post-Soviet Russia.
Cook began her academic career as a visiting assistant professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Business School from 1997 to 2002. She also served as deputy director of Africa Research at Harvard's Center for International Development.
Professional roles and policy contributions
Between 2000 and 2001, Cook worked as a senior adviser on finance and development at the US Treasury Department under a Council on Foreign Relations fellowship.
From 2002 to 2005, she was a National Fellow and Research Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
Cook joined Michigan State University in 2005, became a tenured associate professor in 2013, and has published research on macroeconomics, African-American history, and innovation economics. Her work includes a study linking racial violence to declines in patent activity and the development of a database on lynching in the US.
She served on the Obama administration's Council of Economic Advisers from August 2011 to August 2012 and has advised the governments of Nigeria and Rwanda on economic matters. She has also served on the Executive Committee of the American Economic Association and directed its Summer Program for underrepresented students since 2016.
Nomination and confirmation to the Federal Reserve
President Joe Biden nominated Cook to the US Federal Reserve Board of Governors on January 14, 2022. Following a series of procedural delays and partisan votes, she was confirmed by the Senate on May 10, 2022, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote.
In May 2023, Biden re-nominated her for a full 14-year term. The Senate confirmed her appointment on September 6, 2023, by a 51–47 vote.
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