Princeton’s Griswold Center Welcomes Loretta Mester as a Senior Scholar
The Griswold Center for Economic Policy Studies (GCEPS) welcomes Loretta Mester, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, as a Senior Scholar starting on September 1, 2025.
Mester’s career expertise in central bank governance and monetary policy will strengthen and enrich collaborative research at Princeton.
Loretta Mester
Loretta Mester is an adjunct full professor of finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Current areas of interest include monetary policy strategic framework, monetary policy communications, central bank governance, inflation, financial intermediation and regulation, and payments.
Mester served as president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, 2014–2024; and participated in the formulation of U.S. monetary policy and oversaw more than 1,000 employees based at the Bank’s Cleveland office and Branch offices in Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. Prior to joining the Cleveland Fed, she served at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, starting in 1985 as an economist, becoming senior vice president and director of research in 2000, and executive vice president and director of research in 2010.
Mester is a co-editor of the Journal of Financial Services Research; and has taught in the undergraduate finance and MBA programs at Wharton and in the Ph.D. program in finance at New York University. She is a trustee of the Cleveland Clinic, a trustee of the Musical Arts Association (Cleveland Orchestra), a director of the Council for Economic Education, and a director of the Haverford Trust Company, a director of Renaissance Re, and a member of the advisory council of the Visa Economic Empowerment Institute. Mester earned a BA in mathematics and economics from Barnard College of Columbia University; and a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University, where she was an NSF fellow.
On September 24, 2025, Mester will deliver a public talk at Princeton covering “Update on the Economy and Monetary Policy.” This event is co-sponsored by GCEPS and the Julis-Rabinowitz Center for Public Policy and Finance. Learn more about this event.
The Griswold Center for Economic Policy Studies, which supports policy-related research in the Department of Economics and fosters collaboration among members of the academic, business, and government communities, looks forward to welcoming Mester to Princeton. The Visiting Scholars Program in the Griswold Center for Economic Policy Studies offers the opportunity to appoint former senior policy practitioners and enable research collaboration with faculty, mentoring and student instruction, and enhancement of the intellectual and academic life of the Department of Economics.