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Lael Brainard

Official · Federal Reserve

PPPLF · Other programs
Type
Person
Role
Official · Federal Reserve
Programs
PPPLF, Other programs
Updated

The profile

Federal Reserve governor when the Board set up its 2020 emergency lending facilities, including the one that financed PPP loans; later Fed vice chair and director of the National Economic Council.

Identity and role

Lael Brainard is an economist who served on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors from June 2014 until she resigned on February 18, 2023. President Biden nominated her as vice chair in November 2021; the Senate confirmed her on April 26, 2022, and she took the oath on May 23, 2022. She then served as director of the White House National Economic Council.

Biography / career arc

According to the Federal Reserve's biography, Brainard received a BA with university honors from Wesleyan University in 1983 and an MS and PhD in economics from Harvard University in 1989, where she held a National Science Foundation Fellowship. She worked in management consulting at McKinsey & Company. From 1990 to 1996 she was an assistant and then associate professor of applied economics at MIT's Sloan School of Management.

In the Clinton administration she was deputy national economic adviser, deputy assistant to the president, and the president's personal representative to the G-7/G-8. From 2001 to 2008 she was vice president and founding director of the Global Economy and Development Program at the Brookings Institution. She was counselor to the Treasury secretary in 2009 and under secretary of the Treasury from 2010 to 2013. In those posts she represented the United States among the G-20 finance deputies and G-7 deputies and sat on the Financial Stability Board. She joined the Fed Board in June 2014 to fill an unexpired term ending January 31, 2026.

Pandemic-relief / PPP-EIDL role

Brainard was one of the Board's governors in spring 2020. On April 9, 2020 the Fed announced up to $2.3 trillion in lending. The package included the Paycheck Protection Program Liquidity Facility, which lent to institutions that originated PPP loans and took those loans as collateral at face value. It also announced the Main Street Lending Program, with up to $600 billion in loan purchases backed by $75 billion of CARES Act equity from the Treasury. The same release expanded the corporate-bond and asset-backed securities facilities to up to $850 billion in credit, backed by $85 billion of Treasury credit protection, and set up a Municipal Liquidity Facility for state and local governments.

She described her part at her January 13, 2022 confirmation hearing before the Senate Banking Committee. "I worked day in and day out, alongside Secretary Mnuchin at Treasury, Chair Powell, Vice Chair Quarles, and other colleagues to stand up the necessary facilities to calm financial markets," she said. She said the Fed had worked with the Treasury "to make sure that there was financing available for small banks and CDFIs and MDIs to get loans to small businesses," and to make Main Street financing available. Asked by Chairman Sherrod Brown whether she had supported all of the actions, she answered: "I did not disagree with any of the actions that we took. In fact, I strongly supported them and worked hard to make them work." Her prepared statement added that "when markets stabilized, I worked to responsibly wind down the emergency facilities we established."

Their own relief

The SBA's public PPP loan data (September 30, 2024 release) list no loan to a borrower named Lael Brainard, and the USAspending COVID-EIDL award files we searched list none.

We found no charge, enforcement action or lawsuit naming Brainard in our archive.

Where they are now (2025–2026)

Harvard Kennedy School's page, in our July 2026 copy, calls her the former NEC director and lists her as a senior research fellow at its Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. There she is studying "what lessons we can draw for economic policy from the pandemic shock." The same page lists her as a distinguished fellow at Georgetown's Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy.

Sources held in this archive

  • Section 13(3) and the Fed Balance Sheet
  • The Federal Reserve and Pandemic Relief: An FAQ

Sources

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