Following a year of unparalleled disruption, loosening of monetary and fiscal policy has become the new normal and many long-term economic and societal changes remain uncertain. As vaccination programmes pick up pace amid talk of policy normalisation, OMFIF and the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia are hosting a series of seminars to discuss the Federal Reserve’s priorities. Over five days, Fed Week will cover topics from the economics of artificial intelligence, a green recovery, central bank digital currency, financial stability, macroeconomic developments and how all of this is feeding into the decisions the Fed is making.

All participants will have the chance to participate in the interactive Q&A session, by submitting your questions via the Q&A function.

Bill Foster, Congressman, 11th Congressional District of Illinois, House of Representatives

Bill Foster is US congressman, representing the 11th congressional district of Illinois, a position he’s held since 2013. He also represented the 14th Congressional District of Illinois from 2008-11. Foster serves on the House financial services Committee where he advocates for consumer protections and an economy that works for everyone. In response to the 2008 financial crisis, he helped create several important reforms in the financial services and housing markets, including the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Bill serves as chairman of the financial services committee’s task force on artificial intelligence. He also serves on the House science, space and technology committee where he has fought for evidence-based policies and forward-thinking approaches to some of our country’s most pressing issues, including climate change and energy innovation. He is a champion for sustained federal funding for scientific research.

Jim Cunha, Senior Vice-President, Secure Payments and Fintech Research, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

Jim Cunha is senior vice-president of secure payments and fintech research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Cunha leads the Federal Reserve’s secure payment efforts, which seeks to reduce fraud in the US payment system. Cunha has worked at the Boston Fed since 1984. Prior to that, he worked at Fleet National Bank.

Antoine Martin, Senior Vice-President, Money and Payments Studies Function, Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Antoine Martin is senior vice-president at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Prior to joining the New York Fed in 2005, he was economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

He has been published in scholarly journals, including the Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, Brookings Paper on Economic Activity, Journal of Monetary Economics, and Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Lausanne and the University of Bern.

David Mills, Associate Director, Reserve Bank Operations and Payment Systems, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

David Mills is associate director at the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System. Mills led a Federal Reserve research team that produced a paper on the use of distributed ledger technology in payments, clearing and settlement. He has published articles related to payments and monetary theory in a variety of journals, including the Journal of Monetary Economics, the International Economic Review, the Review of Economic Dynamics, and Macroeconomic Dynamics.

Moderated by Patricia Haas Cleveland, President, US Operations, OMFIF

Patricia Haas Cleveland is president of US operations at OMFIF. She has had a decades-long career in international finance, spanning roles in the government, multilateral development banks and Wall Street. She began her career as an international economist at the US Treasury in Washington, where she served as Treasury’s China economist and helped to establish the US-China joint economic committee. She subsequently joined the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London and served on the president’s task force under Jacques de Larosière. Haas Cleveland later joined Lehman Brothers in London as head of the European corporate advisory division and then moved to New York where she established and headed Lehman Brothers’ capital markets prime services strategic advisory group for hedge fund clients. After Lehman Brothers, Patricia was a consultant for cross-border Chinese investment before joining Citigroup as a managing director in the institutional clients group, focused on the public sector and development banks. She later served as financial adviser to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in Beijing during its pre-launch stage.