Sheila C. Bair has served as the 19th chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation since June 26, 2006. Her appointment as chairman runs for a five-year term, and her membership on the FDIC Board of Directors continues through July 2013.
Bair received a BA from Kansas University and a JD from Kansas University School of Law.
She worked as research director, deputy counsel and counsel to Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole from 1981 to 1988 and commissioner and acting chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 1991 to 1995.
Bair was Senior Vice President for Government Relations of the New York Stock Exchange from 1995 to 2000 and then served as Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions at the US Department of the Treasury from 2001 to 2002.
In 2002, Bair was the Dean’s Professor of Financial Regulatory Policy for the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. During this time, Bair also served on the FDIC’s Advisory Committee on Banking Policy.
Bair has also served as a member of several professional and nonprofit organizations, including the Insurance Marketplace Standards Association, Women in Housing and Finance, Center for Responsible Lending, NASD Ahead-of-the-Curve Advisory Committee, Massachusetts Savings Makes Cents, American Bar Association, Exchequer Club and Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. In 2008,
Forbes ranked Bair
the second most powerful woman in the world behind German chancellor Angela Merkel.