Raphael Bostic

Raphael Bostic earned a PhD in economics from Stanford University and served as a professor at the University of Southern California before joining the Fed. He was appointed President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta in 2017, becoming the first African American to hold a Federal Reserve Bank presidency. At the Atlanta Fed, he oversees an important economic region and votes as a FOMC member. Bostic is known for incorporating perspectives on economic inequality and racial disparities into his economic analysis, arguing that understanding distributional outcomes is important for effective monetary policy. He was among the Fed officials who called for early normalization of monetary policy as inflation rose in 2021-2022. The Atlanta Fed is also known for its GDPNow real-time economic growth tracker, which Bostic's team has developed as a widely followed forecasting tool.