When Cleveland Federal Reserve President and CEO Beth Hammack visited The Ohio State University’s Columbus campus last Wednesday, she offered students a window into the decision-making that influences the U.S. economy.

The John Glenn College of Public Affairs and the Office of Academic Affairs presented a Leadership Dialogue with Hammack at WOSU. Stephanie Moulton, associate dean for faculty and research at the Glenn College, moderated the dialogue, which drew students, faculty and staff.

“It’s going to be a conversation today about what the Fed is, what it does, how its regional system operates and what the president and CEO of a regional bank actually does,” said Trevor Brown, Ohio State’s senior vice provost for Academic Affairs, while introducing Hammack. “We’re going to talk about career paths in economics and public finance and public policy.”

Hammack began her term on Aug. 21, 2024. She participates in the formulation of U.S. monetary policy and oversees 1,100 employees in the Bank’s fourth district that includes Cleveland, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh offices.

While at Ohio State, Hammack visited several colleges and offices.

“We got to spend a lot of time learning about AI and the AI Fluency project that’s going on here,” she said. “We spent some time touring the Center for Automotive Research and learning about all the amazing innovations that are happening on campus.”

Hammack gave an overview of how the Federal Reserve Bank operates. The Federal Reserve is the U.S. central bank, created by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 to establish a monetary system that could respond to stresses in the banking system. The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland is one of 12 regional Reserve Banks in the Federal Reserve System.

Hammack said community development is one of the most important aspects of her job.

“I find that by going out and meeting with these different businesses, community partners, individuals, I get more real-time feel for what’s going on in the economy,” she said. “I try to bring that with me when I go to Washington, when I walk into that monetary policy room to give them a flavor of what’s happening across the fourth district, representing Ohio.”

In addition to community development, Hammack said the Federal Reserve performs five key functions: carrying out the nation’s monetary policy, promoting financial system stability, supervising and regulating financial institutions, fostering payment and settlement system safety and efficiency, and promoting consumer protection.

“The nice thing about our district is that it’s kind of a microcosm of the U.S. economy,” she said. “We’ve got pretty much every sector represented.”

Ohio encompasses a wide variety of industries, including the second heaviest manufacturing district in the country, second only to the Chicago region, Hammack said.

“We’ve got agriculture. We’ve got the transition from the manufacturing to the services economy,” she said. “We’ve got burgeoning technology in the district, and we’ve got energy production. We really have a little bit of everything that happens across the country in the fourth district.”

Cleveland Federal Reserve employees also conduct research, with 71 Ph.D. economists on staff who research various areas of the economy, Hammack said.

“They’re doing independent research, trying to look at what new learnings can we think about that can help us understand problems,” she said. “It really is helpful if you have a creative team of people who are just thinking about what are some interesting problems that they can analyze and look at, whether it’s in housing, workforce development, inflation.”

Hammack took questions from students, offered guidance on careers in economics, policy and leadership, and spoke about her own career path.

Prior to her appointment as Cleveland Federal Reserve president, she was cohead of the global financing group at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. She holds bachelor’s degrees in quantitative economics and history from Stanford University.

Gaining experience in research can enhance students’ competitiveness in the workforce, including helping them to be considered for jobs at the Federal Reserve, she said.  

“One of the opportunities that we run for students, which I think is a great opportunity, is we have something called our Economic Scholars Program,” she said. “It’s basically a research conference that’s all run and managed by students. Students from across the country can come and present their own papers. The other students act as discussants.”

She encouraged students to explore various academic paths and internships to develop a broad base of knowledge and experience.

“You want to take different opportunities that expose you to different things, different ways of thinking, different disciplines,” she said. “One of the great things here [at Ohio State] is that you have so many interdisciplinary opportunities.”