Chris Hughes is an economist and writer who is Chair of the Economic Security Project, a leading nonprofit advocating for economic power for all Americans. He is the author of Marketcrafters: The 100-Year Struggle to Shape the American Economy, published by Simon & Schuster’s Avid Reader Press in 2025. His next book, Power and Plumbing: The Politics of the Fed’s Operating System, is forthcoming from Princeton University Press.
Hughes holds degrees in history and economics from Harvard and The New School for Social Research and is completing his PhD at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. His writing and essays have been published by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, Time Magazine, and others. His first book, Fair Shot: Rethinking Inequality and How We Earn, was published by St Martin’s Press in 2018. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
In 2004, Hughes co-founded Facebook and later directed Barack Obama’s digital organizing efforts in his insurgent 2008 campaign. In addition to his work with the Economic Security Project, Hughes chairs the board of the Brooklyn-based Foundation for Community Psychoanalysis and serves on the boards of the New York Public Library and Employ America. He lives in New York’s Greenwich Village with his husband and their two children.