Lawrence H. Summers

Lawrence H. Summers was the Charles W. Eliot University Professor and is President Emeritus of Harvard University. Heserved in a series of senior policy positions in Washington, D.C., including the 71st Secretary of the Treasury for President Clinton, Director of the National Economic Council for President Obama and Vice President of Development Economics and Chief Economist of the World Bank.

Summers was elected chair of the CGD Board in March 2014 to succeed founding Board Chair Edward Scott Jr. Shortly before assuming his role as CGD board chair on May 1, Summers gave a speech at CGD at which he urged greater US leadership at international financial institutions, such as the World Bank and IMF.

He received a bachelor of science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975 and was awarded a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1982. In 1983, he became one of the youngest individuals in recent history to be named as a tenured member of the Harvard University faculty. In 1987, Summers became the first social scientist ever to receive the annual Alan T. Waterman Award of the National Science Foundation (NSF), and in 1993 he was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal, given every two years to the outstanding American economist under the age of 40.