Lisa D. Cook is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics and in International Relations at Michigan State University. She was the first Marshall Scholar from Spelman College and received a second B.A. in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Oxford University. She earned a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to this appointment and while on faculty at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, she was Deputy Director for Africa Research at the Center for International Development, Managing Editor of the Harvard University-World Economic Forum Africa Competitiveness Report, and contributed to the creation of the Making Markets Work program at Harvard Business School. She was also a National Fellow at Stanford University.

Among her current research interests are economic growth and development, economic history, innovation, and financial institutions and markets. Her publications have appeared in a variety of peer-reviewed journals, including the American Economic Review, the Journal of Economic Growth, Explorations in Economic History, and the Business History Review, as well as in a number of books. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Economic History Association, the Social Science Research Council, Harvard Business School, and the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan, among others.

She serves on the Advisory Boards of the Smithsonian Institution’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth and on the Board of Directors of the Roosevelt Institute and the University Musical Society of the University of Michigan. As a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow, she was Senior Adviser on Finance and Development at the Treasury Department from 2000 to 2001 and is currently a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. During the 2011-2012 academic year, she was on leave at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and worked on the euro zone, financial instruments, entrepreneurship, and innovation. In February 2015, she began serving as the President of the National Economic Association and is the Co-Director of the American Economic Association Summer Training Program. She is a Guest Columnist for the Detroit Free Press and a regular contributor on MSNBC. She speaks English, French, Russian, Spanish, and Wolof.