President-elect Joe Biden nominated Cecilia Rouse to be chair of the Council of Economic Advisers.
If Rouse is confirmed, she will be the fourth woman, and the first African American, to chair the council.
The position: Advises the president on economic policy.
Cecilia Elena Rouse was bron in 1963 and grew up in Del Mar, California, graduating from Torrey Pines High School in 1981.
She has two siblings: Forest Rouse, a physicist; and Carolyn Rouse, an anthropologist and professor at Princeton University. Her father is a research physicist who received his PhD from the California Institute of Technology in 1956, becoming one of the countries first African American astrophysicists.Her mother worked as a school psychologist.
Rouse received a Bachelor of Arts in economics from Harvard University in 1986 and a PhD in economics in 1992.
She has two daughters. Her husband is Ford Morrison, son of author Toni Morrison.
After earning her doctorate, Rouse joined the faculty at Princeton University.
Rouse served as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers from 2009 to 2011 and served in the National Economic Council from 1998 to 1999.
In 1999, Rouse co-authored a book titled “Wage Effects of Unions and Industrial Councils in South Africa.
“Rouse is the dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and the Lawrence and Shirley Katzman and Lewis and Anna Ernst Professor in the Economics of Education.
She is the founding director of the Princeton University Education Research Section, is a member of the National Academy of Education, and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Her primary research interests are in labor economics with a focus on the economics of education.
Rouse has served as an editor of the Journal of Labor Economics and as a senior editor of The Future of Children.
She is a member of the board of directors of MDRC [the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, a non-profit committed to finding solutions to some of the most difficult problems facing the nation — from reducing poverty and bolstering economic self-sufficiency to improving public education and college graduation rates.].
She’s also a director of the T. Rowe Price Equity Mutual Funds and an advisory board member of the T. Rowe Price Fixed Income Mutual Funds.