Philip N. Jefferson
Vice Chair
From the Board's official biography
Listed by the Board as: Philip N. Jefferson, Vice Chair
Philip N. Jefferson took office as the Vice Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on September 13, 2023, for a four-year term.
Philip N. Jefferson took office as the Vice Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on September 13, 2023, for a four-year term. Dr. Jefferson has served as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System since taking office on May 23, 2022, to fill an unexpired term ending January 31, 2036.
Most recently, Dr. Jefferson was vice president for academic affairs and dean of faculty and the Paul B. Freeland Professor of Economics at Davidson College.
Before then, Dr. Jefferson served as chair of the Department of Economics at Swarthmore College, where he was the Centennial Professor of Economics.
Prior to this position, Dr. Jefferson was an economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.
Dr. Jefferson’s other past roles include being president of the National Economic Association. He also served on the Vassar College Board of Trustees and the Board of Advisors of the Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
Quoted verbatim from the Board of Governors' biography of Philip N. Jefferson, a U.S. Government work in the public domain. Retrieved Sep 2, 2026, 9:58 a.m. ET. Nothing above is written by this site.
What a governor does
The Board of Governors has seven seats. Every governor is a permanent voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee, which sets the target range for the federal funds rate, and shares in the Board's other work: supervising the largest banks, setting reserve requirements and the discount rate, and overseeing the twelve regional Reserve Banks.
A full term is fourteen years, and the terms are staggered so that one expires every two years. The length is deliberate. It is meant to outlast any single President, so that a governor's decisions are not made with the next election in mind. A governor appointed to fill an unexpired term can be reappointed to a full one; a governor who has served a full term cannot.
How the Chair is chosen
The Chair and the two Vice Chairs are governors first. They are designated to those roles by the President from among the sitting governors, for four-year terms, and each designation is confirmed separately by the Senate. A Chair whose four-year designation ends can remain on the Board as a governor for the rest of their fourteen-year term.
The Chair presides over the Board and the FOMC, testifies to Congress twice a year, and gives the press conference after each meeting. On the Committee itself, the Chair holds one vote of twelve.
Where this fits
The full current roster, the twelve districts and the plain-language primer are on What is the Federal Reserve?. The meeting schedule is on the FOMC calendar.