Biden nominates 3 to Fed board, including first Black woman

President Joe Biden will nominate three people to the Senate for the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors

WASHINGTON -- President Joe Biden will nominate three people for the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors, including former Fed official Sarah Bloom Raskin for the top regulatory slot, and Lisa Cook, who would be the first Black woman to serve as a governor.

Biden will also nominate Phillip Jefferson, an economist, dean of faculty at Davidson College in North Carolina, and a former Fed researcher, according to a person familiar with the decision Thursday who was not authorized to speak on the record. The three nominations will have to be approved by the Senate.

Raskin's nomination to the position of Fed vice chair for supervision — the nation's top bank regulator — will be welcomed by progressive senators and advocacy groups, who see her as likely to be tougher bank regulator than Chair Jerome Powell. She is also viewed as someone committed to incorporating climate change considerations into the Fed's oversight of banks. For that reason, however, she has already drawn opposition from Republican senators.

Raskin, 60, is a Harvard-trained lawyer and previously served on the Fed’s seven-member board from 2010 to 2014. President Barack Obama then chose her to serve as deputy Treasury secretary, the No. 2 job in the department.