A professor at USC has become the front-runner to succeed Dennis Lockhart as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, the Wall Street Journal is reporting this evening.
Raphael Bostic, a former housing official in the Obama administration, would be the first African-American president of one of the Fed’s 12 regional banks.
He is now a professor of public policy at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
Lockhart resigned, leaving his position at the end of February. The decision about a new president, which will be made by the Atlanta Fed’s board, could be announced in the next few weeks, the Journal reported.
In a recent interview with the AJC, Lockhart expressed enthusiastic support for considering diverse candidates for his and other positions at the Fed.
The Journal reported that 15 of the central bank’s 16 governors and bank presidents are white. A dozen of them are men. None are black or Hispanic, although Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari is the son of Indian immigrants.
Three African-Americans have served on the Fed’s Board of Governors since the central bank’s establishment in 1913, the Journal said.
Bostic, 50, served from 2009 to 2012 as assistant secretary for policy development and research at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Journal reported.
He has a doctorate in economics from Stanford University and an undergraduate degree from Harvard University.
