Margaret M. McConnell is a Senior Vice President and Head of the Applied Critical Thinking Function in the Executive Office of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY). The mission of the Applied Critical Thinking Function is to promote awareness of the challenges that complexity, uncertainty, bias and specialization pose to all aspects of policy making, and to bolster capacity to learn, adapt and innovate in the face of those challenges.
Prior to assuming her current role in January 2015, Ms. McConnell was the Director of the FRBNY’s Office of Financial Stability and Regulatory Policy. The office was established in 2011 to coordinate work on financial stability and regulatory policy matters and to serve as a secretariat for the FRBNY’s participation in domestic and international forums and working groups.
From 2007 to 2011, Ms. McConnell served as the Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy to the President of FRBNY. In this role, she coordinated the organization's work on a wide range of policy issues, including many of the efforts undertaken to stabilize the financial system during the severe financial crisis that began in August 2007.
Ms. McConnell joined the FRBNY in September 1996 as an Economist in the Research and Statistics Group. Her research focused on monetary policy, business cycles, and labor market dynamics. She holds a Ph.D. in economics from The Ohio State University and a B.S. in economics from the University of Delaware.
