Conferences & Events

Speaker Biographies

Tom Barkin is the president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. He has held this position since 2018. Tom serves on the Fed’s chief monetary policy body, the Federal Open Market Committee, and is also responsible for bank supervision and the Federal Reserve’s technology organization. He is “on the ground” continually in the Fed’s Fifth District, which covers South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Washington DC, West Virginia and Maryland. His engagement in the region has brought real attention to areas facing economic challenges. Prior to joining the Richmond Fed, Tom was a senior partner and chief financial officer at McKinsey & Company, a worldwide management consulting firm, where he also oversaw McKinsey’s offices in the southern United States. Tom earned his bachelor’s, MBA and law degrees from Harvard University.

Raphael W. Bostic is president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. From 2012 to 2017, Bostic was the Judith and John Bedrosian Chair in Governance and the Public Enterprise at the Sol Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California (USC), where he was director of the master's of real estate development degree program and founding director of the Casden Real Estate Economics Forecast. Bostic also served USC's Lusk Center for Real Estate as the interim associate director from 2007 to 2009 and as the interim director from 2015 to 2016. From 2016 to 2017, he was the chair of the center's Governance, Management, and Policy Process Department. From 2009 to 2012, Bostic was the assistant secretary for policy development and research at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Bostic worked at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors from 1995 to 2001, first as an economist and then a senior economist. He served as special assistant to HUD's assistant secretary of policy development and research in 1999. He was also a professional lecturer at American University in 1998. He graduated from Harvard University in 1987 with a combined major in economics and psychology. He earned his doctorate in economics from Stanford University in 1995.

Dr. Ron S. Jarmin has been the US Census Bureau’s deputy director and chief operating officer since January 2019 and served as acting director from January 2021 to January 2022. He performed the nonexclusive functions and duties of the director from July 2017 to January 2019 and previously served as the associate director for economic programs. Jarmin led the team for the 2017 Economic Census, overseeing a move to 100 percent Internet data collection and leveraging enterprise investments to minimize system, application, and dissemination costs. Economic census data products provide the foundation for key measures of economic performance, including the nation’s gross domestic product.

From 2011 to 2016, Jarmin served as assistant director for research and methodology. He oversaw a broad research program in statistics, survey methodology, and economics aimed at improving economic and social measurements within the federal statistical system. Since beginning his career at the Census Bureau in 1992, he has also served as the chief economist, chief of the Center for Economic Studies, and a research economist.

Jarmin holds a PhD in economics from the University of Oregon. An elected fellow of the American Statistical Association, he has published papers in the areas of industrial organization, business dynamics, entrepreneurship, technology and firm performance, urban economics, data access, and statistical disclosure avoidance.