Ray Boshara

Ray Boshara is Senior Advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, where he also directs the Center for Household Financial Stability. The Center conducts research on family balance sheets and how they matter for strengthening families and the economy. Boshara is also a senior fellow in the Financial Security Program at The Aspen Institute.

Prior to joining the Fed in April 2011, Boshara was Vice President of New America, a DC-based think-tank, where he founded and directed the Asset Building Program, Next Social Contract Initiative, Global Assets Project, Financial Services and Education Project, and College Savings Initiative.  He has also worked for CFED, the Select Committee on Hunger and Congressman Tony P. Hall in the U.S. Congress, the U.N.’s International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in Rome, and Ernst & Young.

Over the last 25 years, Boshara has advised the Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama Administrations, presidential candidates, and leading policymakers worldwide. He has testified before the U.S. Congress several times, and given speeches around the world on ownership strategies for the poor, on the U.S. economy, and on the American social contract. He was instrumental in the passage of the Assets for Independence Act in 1998 and the introduction of the ASPIRE Act in 2004, as well as other bi-partisan legislation in the U.S. Congress to build wealth for lower-income children and families. Boshara has written for The Washington Post, The New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, and Democracy, and has appeared on NPR, Marketplace, MSNBC, C-SPAN, Bloomberg News, among others.  His book, The Next Progressive Era, co-authored Phillip Longman, was published in April 2009.

Boshara currently serves on many national boards and advisory boards, including the Economic Mobility Project of the Pew Charitable Trusts, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, The Peace and Justice Commission of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, Beyond Housing, and U.S. Financial Health Pulse.

A native of Akron, Ohio, Boshara is a graduate of The Ohio State University, Yale Divinity School, and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.  He received the PaceSetter Award at Ohio State; was named a Littauer Fellow at Harvard for outstanding scholarship, leadership, and community service; and was selected by Esquire magazine as one of America’s Best and Brightest.  He lives in St. Louis with his wife, Lora Iannotti, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis; they have three children, ages 22, 20, and 17.