President Barack Obama has nominated Rebecca Blank, former dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, to be undersecretary for economic affairs in the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Blank has been the Robert S. Kerr Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution since July 2008. Before that, she was dean of the Ford School from 1999-2007, and was the Henry Carter Adams Collegiate Professor of Public Policy and a professor of economics from 1999-2008. During her tenure as dean, the Joan and Sanford Weill Hall was built and opened in 2006, and an undergraduate degree in public policy was created.
She was co-director of the National Poverty Center from 2002-08 and served on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1997-99.
Blank’s research has focused on the interactions between the macroeconomy, government policy, and the behavior and well being of American families. Her 1997 book, “It Takes A Nation: A New Agenda for Fighting Poverty,” won the Richard A. Lester Prize for the Outstanding Book in Labor Economics and Industrial Relations.
She is a faculty affiliate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Blank has served in a wide variety of advisory and professional roles, and currently is on the board of directors of the Economic Policy Institute and the Urban Institute.
