Washington, D.C. — The Brookings Institution announced that Cecilia Rouse has been named its next president, following approval by its Board of Trustees. Rouse’s appointment will be effective in January 2024, when she will succeed Amy Liu, who has served as interim president since July 2022 and will remain in this role until January.
Rouse will join Brookings from Princeton University, where she is the Katzman-Ernst Professor in Economics and Education. Rouse served in the White House as the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers from 2021 to 2023 and was the first Black economist to hold this position in the Council’s 77-year history. Previously, Rouse served as the Dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. She also served as a Member of the Council of Economic Advisers from 2009 to 2011 and worked as a Special Assistant to the President from 1998 to 1999.
“We are delighted that Dr. Rouse will join the Brookings Institution as its ninth president since its founding in 1916. Dr. Rouse has demonstrated an exceptional commitment to public policy and education through her many years of dedicated public service and rigorous scholarship,” said Glenn Hutchins and Suzanne Nora Johnson, co-chairs of the Brookings Board of Trustees. “She is the right leader for Brookings. Her leadership and managerial experiences have always shown a commitment to rigor, balance and inclusivity, which are hallmarks of Brookings’s research and values. We would also especially like to thank Amy Liu for serving as our interim president this past year to ensure the continued excellence of Brookings’s work.”
“Dr. Rouse joins Brookings as the ideal president for Brookings at this dynamic moment, after a thorough and comprehensive search by the Board of Trustees. Brookings’s research and evidence-based analyses are critical to solving domestic and global challenges and shaping better policy outcomes for all,” said Kenneth M. Jacobs, co-chair of the Board Search Committee.
“Cecilia is that rare triple threat: an outstanding scholar, a strong institutional leader, and a policy adviser at the highest levels,” said Ben Bernanke, Brookings distinguished senior fellow and former Federal Reserve Chair. “Those strengths make her a great fit for Brookings.”
Based in Washington, D.C., and reporting to the Board of Trustees, Rouse will oversee all aspects of Brookings to ensure its unwavering ability to produce the highest-quality research and policy recommendations.
“I am thrilled to be joining the Brookings Institution as its next president,” said Dr. Rouse. “Brookings has for more than a century been central to global policy leadership and is world-renowned for the quality of its experts and research. A free exchange of ideas among a diversity of thought is foundational to strong research. We live in an era of profound challenges, from the climate crisis and societal polarization, to economic insecurity, to the unknown bounds of our technology. Brookings will continue to ask the best questions and seek answers that work.”
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About Brookings
The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit public policy organization whose mission is to provide in-depth, nonpartisan research to improve policy and governance at local, national, and global levels.
At the core of Brookings’s mission is the quality, independence, and impact of its research. Brookings is dedicated to finding bold, pragmatic solutions for today’s challenges through open-minded inquiry, supporting diverse perspectives, and holding itself to the highest standards of scholastic rigor. Because of this, Brookings has been at the forefront of public policy for more than a century.
About Dr. Cecilia Rouse
Dr. Cecilia Elena Rouse is the Katzman-Ernst Professor in Economics and Education and professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University. She served in the White House as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) from 2021 to 2023. Rouse is the first Black American to fill the role (confirmed with 95 votes in the U.S. Senate) in the CEA’s 77-year history. It was her third White House tour of duty, serving her third President. She is the former dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. A labor economist with a focus on the economics of education, Rouse is the founding director of the Princeton Education Research Section and a member of the American Philosophical Society and the National Academy of Education. She has served as senior editor of The Future of Children, a policy journal published by Princeton and the Brookings Institution; co-editor of the Journal of Labor Economics; and on the editorial boards of the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy and other journals. She is a former trustee and member of the Council on Foreign Relations, previously served on the boards of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Pennington School, and University of Rhode Island, and was an independent director of the T. Rowe Price Funds.
From 2009 to 2011, Rouse served as a Member of the Council of Economic Advisers. She worked at the National Economic Council as a Special Assistant to the President from 1998 to 1999.
Rouse joined the Princeton faculty in 1992 after earning her Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University, where she also completed her undergraduate work.