Sarah Bloom Raskin


Sarah Bloom Raskin is an American attorney and regulator, who was formerly a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and a former United States Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. Previously, she served as Maryland Commissioner of Financial Regulation and as a Managing Director at the Promontory Financial Group. She is currently a Rubenstein Fellow at Duke University.
Since 2019, she has been touted as a potential future Secretary of the Treasury.

Early life and education

Bloom Raskin was born to a Jewish family in Medford, Massachusetts, the daughter of Arlene and Herbert Bloom. She attended Homewood-Flossmoor High School in Flossmoor, Illinois, where she graduated in 1979. Afterwards, she went on to Amherst College where she graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a B.A. in economics in 1983, and wrote her undergraduate thesis on monetary policy. She received her J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1986. Raskin was honored with an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters by Muhlenberg College on May 19th, 2019.

Career

Raskin worked as an associate at Arnold & Porter and as counsel for the U.S. Senate Banking Committee. Prior to serving as Commissioner, she was a Managing Director at the Promontory Financial Group. Raskin also served as chief financial regulator for Maryland.
President Obama nominated Raskin to the Federal Reserve Board along with fellow nominees Dr. Janet Yellen, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology economics professor Peter A. Diamond. Raskin and Yellen were unanimously confirmed as Federal Reserve Board governors by the United States Senate on September 30, 2010. On October 4, 2010, both were sworn in by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. As a member of the Federal Reserve Board, Raskin gained a reputation as someone focused on consumer protection and income inequality.
On July 31, 2013, President Barack Obama announced that he would nominate Raskin to the second-in-command position of Deputy Secretary at the United States Department of the Treasury. She was confirmed to the position on March 12, 2014 by a voice vote. Upon confirmation, Raskin became the highest-ranked woman in the history of the Treasury Department. Raskin was sworn in on March 19, 2014. Upon her confirmation as Deputy Secretary she resigned as a Member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on March 13, 2014.
During the 2017–18 academic year, Raskin is a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law.
During the 2018-19, 2019-2020 academic years, Raskin is a Rubenstein Fellow at Duke University. As a Rubenstein Fellow, the Honorable Sarah Bloom Raskin works closely with the Rethinking Regulation program at Duke’s Kenan Institute for Ethics and with the Global Financial Markets Center at Duke Law School to improve the public’s understanding of markets and regulation. In particular, she leads a research agenda that seeks to shape a new relationship between regulation and resilience in financial markets; and explores opportunities to harness cyber-data and turn it into a public asset rather than a liability.

Personal life

Raskin is married to Jamie Raskin, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland's. They have three adult children and currently live in Takoma Park, Maryland.