The Grainger College of Engineering

Neel Kashkari

Neel Kashkari
Neel Kashkari

For his outstanding professional accomplishments as a leader in public policy and banking and his generous support of the University of Illinois.

President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis

  • BS, Mechanical Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 1995
  • MS, Mechanical Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 1998
  • MBA, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, 2002

Neel Kashkari is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. In his role, which he has held since 2016, Kashkari serves on the Federal Open Market Committee oversees operations including supervision and regulation, treasury services, and payment services. One initiative established under his leadership is the Opportunity & Inclusive Growth Initiative, which aims to ensure world-class research helps improve the economic well-being of all Americans. Under his leadership, the bank released an action plan on “Ending Too Big to Fail,” which calls for tighter bank regulations to avoid future bailouts of large financial institutions. He also is part of a proposal to amend the Minnesota constitution to make quality public education a fundamental right. 

Kashkari began his career as an aerospace engineer at TRW, where he developed technology used for NASA space science missions. He went back to school to earn his MBA, and later joined Goldman Sachs. Between 2006 and 2009, Kashkari served in several senior positions in the U.S. Department of the Treasury. He was confirmed as the assistant secretary of the Treasury in 2008 and oversaw the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) during the financial crisis. He joined PIMCO in 2009 as the managing director and member of the executive office. He left that role in 2013, to pursue a further career in public service, running for governor of California in 2014.

Kashkari has been published in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and Financial Times. For his work at the Department of the Treasury, he received the Alexander Hamilton Award, the department’s highest honor for distinguished service.

Current as of March 2021