Lael Brainard

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Dr. Lael Brainard is currently serving as Special Assistant to the President for International Economic Policy at the White House National Economic Council. In that capacity, Brainard has served as the White House staff coordinator for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders meeting in Vancouver and Manila, the President's three-year review of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and the G7/G8 Jobs Conferences in the UK and France, and participated in the President's visits to Latin America and the Miami summit of the Americas.

Before coming to Washtington, Brainard served as Associate Professor of Applied Economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she taught graduate business courses on international trade and competition and on international financial policy and markets.

Previously, Brainard worked at the management consulting firm, McKinsey and Co., for clients in the automobile, financial services and consumer goods industries. She has also worked as a Senior Economist at the Council of Economic Advisers, and as a consultant on small business development and microenterprise lending in Africa for the Ford Foundation and the Harvard Institute of International Development.

Brainard is the author of articles on the effects of offshore production on domestic manufacturing employment, multinational priduction and its relationship to trade, strategic trade policy, the debate over structural vs. cyclical unemployment, declining industries, and small business lending in Africa.

Brainard received masters and doctoral degrees in Economics from Harvard University and a bachelors degree from Wesleyan University. She has received a variety of awards, including a White House Fellowship, Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship, MIT Career Development Chair, National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship, and research grants from the National Science Foundation. She is a Faculty Research Fellow at eh National Bureau of Economic Research and has been Term Member at the Council on Foreign Relations. She has also served on the Board of Trustees of Wesleyan University and the Boston Urban Youth Foundation.