The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis named Alberto Musalem, formerly an executive vice president at the New York Fed, as its next president Thursday.
Musalem, who will start April 2 and serve through Feb. 28, 2026, succeeds James Bullard as the St. Louis Fed president. Bullard stepped down in August to become dean of Purdue University’s business school after a 15-year Fed stint. Kathleen O’Neill Paese will continue to serve as interim president until Musalem begins, the St. Louis Fed said in its statement.
Musalem’s hire also marks the second high-profile Fed role taken by a Hispanic economist in the past year. The Senate in September confirmed Colombian-born Adriana Kugler to a seat on the Federal Reserve’s board of governors. Musalem, too, was born in Colombia.
“Alberto will be an outstanding president and CEO of the St. Louis Fed,” Carolyn Chism Hardy, the deputy chair of the Fed regional office’s search committee, said in a statement. “As an experienced economist, former Federal Reserve leader, collaborator and communicator, he comes with the exceptional technical expertise and leadership abilities needed to contribute to effective policymaking and advance a large organization in service to the public.”
Musalem will rotate with other regional Fed presidents as a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee, and will vote in 2025.
“I am deeply honored to serve as the next president of the St. Louis Fed and grateful for the opportunity to promote a strong, resilient and inclusive economy,” Musalem said in a statement Thursday.
The St. Louis Fed covers a seven-state region, including parts of Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi, as well as all of Arkansas. The regional central bank also maintains an online data portal called Fred for accessing economic data.
Most recently, Musalem served as CEO, co-chief investment officer and co-founder of Evince Asset Management, a quantitative investment technology company. Before that, he was executive vice president and senior vice president at the New York Fed, where he led integrated policy analysis and international affairs. He also worked as a managing director, partner, and global head of research at Tudor Investment Corp. and as an economist at the International Monetary Fund.
Musalem’s appointment “is a consequential choice because it adds someone that has expertise in both monetary policy and financial markets — a relatively rare combination within the Federal Reserve,” William Dudley, a former president of the New York Fed, told The Wall Street Journal.
