Who is the Fed chair?

How the chair is chosen

The chair is one of the seven members of the Board of Governors, designated to the role by the President and confirmed by the Senate for a four-year term. The designation is separate from the seat: a governor's own term runs fourteen years, and a chair whose four years end can stay on as a governor, as Jerome Powell did in 2026. A person who is not already a governor must be confirmed to a Board seat as well as to the chair.

The four-year term is set by the Federal Reserve Act and is not tied to the presidential term, which is why a President usually inherits a chair chosen by a predecessor.

What the chair actually does

The chair presides over the Board of Governors and, by convention, chairs the Federal Open Market Committee, the body that sets the federal funds target range. The chair holds one vote of twelve on that committee. The job's weight comes from the rest of it: the press conference after every meeting, semi-annual testimony to Congress, and the chair's role as the public voice of the institution and its main contact with the Treasury and the White House.

The chair does not set interest rates alone, cannot be removed for a policy disagreement, and does not run the twelve regional Reserve Banks, each of which has its own president. See What is the Fed for how the pieces fit.

Recent chairs

The last five chairs before the current designation, with the dates from the Board's membership page.

Source: Board of Governors, membership of the Board 1914–present. Powell's end date is as stated in the Board's own biography of him.

The whole Board

All seven seats, with designations as the Board lists them, are on the Federal Reserve hub; each member has a page quoting the Board's biography verbatim.