Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Larry Summers to Become Board Chair at CGD

Former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers has been tapped to be the next Board Chair of the think tank Center for Global Development (CGD).  He will succeed founding board chair Edward Scott Jr., who informed the board recently of his decision to step down, and proposed Summers as his successor.

Summers was a member of CGD's original board, and he is one of three former secretaries of the US Treasury who have served on CGD's board.  Timothy Geithner, a former US Treasury Secretary, is a former CGD board member.

The change in board leadership is effective May 1, 2014.

Summers is no stranger to think tank land. In fact, he is a prolific think tanker.  In late 2012 he was named as a Distinguished Fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP).  He is also on the Advisory Council at The Hamilton Project, an economic policy project housed within the Brookings Institution.  He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE).  Summers is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

Think Tank Watch reported last year that Summers had wanted to become Chairman of the Federal Reserve and lobbied hard for that post (and embraced another think tank for his lobbying campaign), but was ultimately knocked out by a think tank dedicated to women's issues.

CGD was founded in 2001 by Edward Scott Jr., C. Fred Bergsten, and Nancy Birdstall, the current President of CGD.

CGD was recently ranked as the 27th best think tank in the United States in the annual University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings.  CGD was also rated as the 4th best think tank in the world in terms of international development, only behind Brookings (#1), Center for International Development (#2), and Overseas Development Institute (#3).