Who is Lisa Cook, the first Fed governor a president has ever tried to fire?

Washington
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President Donald Trump on Monday said he had fired Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook — the first Fed governor ever to be placed in that position — citing allegations of mortgage fraud. But before the Trump administration thrust Cook into the spotlight, she was already known for being a trailblazer.

In 2022, Cook became the first Black woman to serve on the Fed’s Board of Governors, appointed by President Joe Biden. Now her term, which was slated to run through January 2038, could wind up in the hands of the courts after Cook’s attorney said he would file a lawsuit challenging Trump’s attempted removal of Cook.

Before joining the Fed’s ranks, Cook was a professor of economics and international relations at Michigan State University for about two decades. Her research focused on racial disparities, the history of financial institutions, crises in financial markets and innovation. She left after being tapped to be a Fed governor.

She also worked as a senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisers under former President Barack Obama.

Cook’s scholarship in economic inequality was a major sticking point for Republicans during her Senate confirmation hearing in May 2022; Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania called her “grossly unqualified.” She was ultimately confirmed through a tie-breaking vote by then-Vice President Kamala Harris.

During her time as a Fed governor, she frequently gave speeches on the economic implications of artificial intelligence and voted with Fed Chair Jerome Powell on policy moves, including in 2022 when the Fed hiked rates aggressively.

On August 6, during a moderated discussion hosted by the Boston Fed, Cook said that the weak streak of job growth in recent months is “concerning” and that the labor market could be at a turning point. She has not signaled how she might vote during the Fed’s September 16-17 meeting, which investors expect to result in the first rate cut since December 2024.

Cook was the first student from Spelman College in Atlanta, an all-female historically Black college, to win a Marshall scholarship. She earned a second bachelor’s degree from Oxford University as a Marshall scholar and a PhD in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Born in 1964, Cook is a Georgia native whose family was active in the civil rights movement. Her uncle was Samuel DuBois, an influential political scientist who became the first Black professor at Duke University and was classmates with Martin Luther King Jr.

In 2019, Cook and Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman, a writer and activist, wrote an opinion article in the New York Times on the challenges faced by Black woman in economics.

“Economics is neither a welcoming nor a supportive profession for women,” they wrote. “But if economics is hostile to women, it is especially antagonistic to Black women.”