The Geoeconomic Council of Advisers will continue to expand and incorporate different perspectives. The below list represents the inaugural members of the council.
*Members of the CSIS Geoeconomic Council of Advisers serve in their personal capacities. All opinions, positions, and recommendations expressed are their own.
Kirti Gupta is a noted economist and expert specializing in global matters related to technology, antitrust, and intellectual property (IP). Dr. Gupta’s diverse expertise spans engineering, product, litigation, and policy issues in the technology sector. She has more than 20 years of experience working at the forefront of technologies, including mobile/wireless telecommunications, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and semiconductors. She currently serves as vice president and chief economist of global technology at Cornerstone Research, leading their technology, digital economy, and artificial intelligence practice. Before joining Cornerstone Research, Dr. Gupta was a vice president and chief economist at Qualcomm Inc. She is a cofounder and executive director of the IPLeadershIP platform, which convenes timely dialogues on IP and antitrust policy issues on a regular basis. She is also the executive director at the Institute for Business Innovation at the Haas School of Business at University of California, Berkeley; is a coinventor of over 40 patents in the field of wireless communications; and has published in various policy, law, and economics journals.
Timothy Boroughs is Executive Vice President, Chubb Group and Chief Investment Officer. He is responsible for managing Chubb’s global investment portfolio, as well as supervising the implementation of the company’s asset management strategies. Prior to ACE’s acquisition of Chubb in January 2016, Mr. Boroughs was Chief Investment Officer of ACE , a position he held since joining the company in 2000. He was appointed Executive Vice President, ACE Group, in March 2014.
Before joining ACE, Mr. Boroughs was Director of Fixed Income at Tudor Investment Corporation from 1997 to 2000 and Managing Partner and Director of Global Leveraged Investment Activity at Fischer Francis Trees & Watts from 1976 to 1997. Mr. Boroughs was a business school lecturer at the New York Institute of Finance, and a former trustee and board member at the American School in London. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Finance from Indiana University and graduated with highest honors.
Elaine Buckberg, Ph.D. is a senior fellow of the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard University. Previously, she was Chief Economist of General Motors (GM) from 2018 to March 2023. At GM, Elaine was responsible for assessing the impact of worldwide economic developments on the corporation, and for providing advice on various competitive and economic policy issues.
From 2013-16, Elaine served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy Coordination in the Office of Economic Policy at the U.S. Treasury Department, where her portfolio including infrastructure and housing finance. She has also worked in economic consulting, at the Brattle Group and NERA Economic Consulting, and in finance at Morgan Stanley. Elaine began her career as an Economist at the International Monetary Fund. Elaine received her Ph.D. in Economics from MIT and her B.A. from Yale.
Helen Currie is Chief Economist for ConocoPhillips. Currie has over 20 years experience in the energy industry with ConocoPhillips and BG Group. Prior to her current role, she held leadership positions in Corporate Strategy, Business Development, Upstream and Downstream business analysis, Commercial Risk Management and IT Risk Systems.
Prior to entering the energy sector, Currie held roles in academia as a finance professor and in government as an economic analyst. She has published work in finance and management journals and energy industry research. Currie is a noted industry expert and frequent speaker at industry venues. She was named as one of Oil & Gas Investor’s Top 25 Influential Women in Energy in 2018. She is President of the U.S. Association for Energy Economics and a member of the Mississippi State University Foundation Board of Directors where she chairs the Investment Committee. Currie holds a PhD in Finance from Mississippi State University, a Master’s in Economics from University of Washington, and a Bachelor’s in Economics from Millsaps College.
Carolyn Evans is Chief Economist at Intel Corporation, where she has also previously worked as a Senior Economist and a Senior Data Scientist. Prior to joining Intel, Carolyn held the positions of Associate Professor of Economics at Santa Clara University, Senior Economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, Senior Staff Economist for International Trade on the U.S. President’s Council of Economic Advisers, and Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Carolyn holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Economics and a B.A. in East Asian Languages and Civilizations, all from Harvard University. She also holds a M.Sc. from the London School of Economics. She has published academic articles and books in the areas of international trade, political economy, global macroeconomics, and corporate finance.
Tyler Goodspeed is the Chief Economist of ExxonMobil Corporation. From 2020 to 2021 he served as acting chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, having been appointed by the president as a member of the council in 2019. In that role he advised the administration’s economic response to the coronavirus pandemic and also chaired the Economic Policy Committee at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). He previously served on the council as chief economist for macroeconomic policy and senior economist for tax, public finance, and macroeconomics.
Dr. Goodspeed has held academic appointments in the Department of Economics at the University of Oxford, the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London, and he was a Kleinheinz Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He has published extensively on macroeconomic topics, with particular attention to the role of access to credit in mitigating the effects of adverse environmental shocks. Goodspeed has a PhD in economics from the University of Cambridge and a PhD in history from Harvard University. He received a BA in economics and history from Harvard, an MA in history from Harvard, and an MPhil in economic history from Cambridge, where he was a Gates Scholar.
Dr. Jan Hogrefe is the Director of Market Analysis and Chief Economist for Boeing Commercial Airplanes. He leads a team identifying and analyzing key trends in the aviation industry. Before joining Boeing in 2014, Jan worked at the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) in Germany, leading economic policy consulting projects. Jan holds a doctorate degree in economics from the University of Tuebingen, Germany. He is the Vice-chair of the Conference of Business Economics (CBE), a member and former Director of the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) as well as a member of the National Economics Issues Council (NBEIC). He is a graduate of the Young American Leaders Program at Harvard Business School (2016) and Leadership Tomorrow Seattle (2016). In 2023, he was appointed to serve on the Washington State Governor’s Council of Economic Advisors. Jan frequently speaks at industry events and economics conferences.
As chief economist of Mastercard, North America, Michelle’s responsibilities include development and delivery of differentiated economic, financial, policy and market thought leadership for customers, Mastercard and public policy. Prior to joining Mastercard, Michelle was the Head of U.S. Economics at Bank of America (BofA) Global Research. At BofA, she was responsible for providing the firm’s U.S. economic forecasts, including the outlook for GDP, inflation, and Federal Reserve policy. Michelle’s research is focused on the health of the consumer, relying on a variety of high frequency data sources. She received a Visionary Award by the Council for Economic Education in 2023. She was also named by Forbes Magazine as one of 30 under 30 in finance in 2011 and a Rising Star by the Women’s Forum for Economy and Society in 2012.
Dr. Skylar Olsen is the chief economist at Zillow. A Ph.D. housing economist with over a decade studying U.S. housing markets and consumers, Skylar is passionate about ensuring policymakers, journalists, housing professionals, and her colleagues have the data and understanding they need to make better decisions.
Skylar has testified before Congress about fair housing issues and regularly shares her housing-market expertise on stage, in print, and on local and national television and radio stations. She also teaches Real Estate Evolution and Disruption at the University of Washington, where she earned her PhD, and was a Visiting Scholar to the College of William and Mary during Fall 2023.
Before returning as Zillow’s chief economist in July 2022, Skylar was a foundational member of Zillow’s public-facing economics team from 2012 to 2020, was personally behind much of Zillow's most famous research work and collaborations with academic and government research teams. From 2020 to 2020, she built and supported public-facing economics and data programs in Prop/FinTech through Reimagine Economics, a consultancy she founded, and was head of economics at Tomo, a digital mortgage start-up.
Tom Orlik is Bloomberg’s Chief Economist, based in Washington DC. Previously, Tom was the Chief Asia economist for Bloomberg and China economics correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, based in Beijing. Prior to a decade in China, he worked at the British Treasury, European Commission, and International Monetary Fund. He is the author of Understanding China’s Economic Indicators (FT Press) and China: The Bubble that Never Pops (OUP).
Michael Schwarz is Chief Economist and Corporate Vice President at Microsoft. Michael joined Microsoft in 2017. This is not the first time Michael is in the chief economist role. Before joining Microsoft, Michael worked at Google in various roles. Most recently he was the Chief Economist for Google Cloud. Prior to that he led the team that built a carpooling marketplace that later become Waze Carpool. Subsequently Michael became the Chief Scientist for Waze. Before his five year long tenure at Google, Michael was the head of the economics research unit at Yahoo! He played a critical role in designing Yahoo! ad marketplaces. His most externally visible project at Yahoo! was developing algorithms for setting optimal reserve prices for search advertising auctions, which had significant impact on overall company earnings. Michael started his professional life as a faculty member at Harvard University’s Economics Department. Michael holds a PhD from Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Mark M. Zandi is chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, where he directs economic research. Dr. Zandi is on the board of directors of MGIC, the nation’s largest private mortgage insurance company, PMAP, a data visualization and analytics company, and the Coleridge Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to facilitating the use of government data. Moody’s Analytics, a subsidiary of Moody’s Corp., is a leading provider of economic research, data and analytical tools
Ellen Zentner is Chief US Economist at Morgan Stanley, a Managing Director, and a member of its Research Diversity and Inclusion Council. Ellen is President of the National Association for Business Economics, and currently serves on the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee. She sits on the Economic Advisory Panel for the American Bankers’ Association and is a former member of the Economic Advisory Council for the Federal Reserve Banks of New York and Chicago. Ms. Zentner is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a Trustee of the Graduate Center Foundation of the City University of New York (CUNY). In 2018 and 2020, Ellen’s team received the Lawrence R. Klein Award for the most accurate economic forecasts over the past four years. Ms. Zentner holds a Bachelor of Business Administration and a Master’s Degree in Economics from the University of Colorado.
