Summers, Lawrence Henry (1954-…), was United States secretary of the treasury from 1999 to 2001. President Bill Clinton appointed Summers to the Cabinet post. At the time of the appointment, Summers had served as deputy secretary of the treasury since 1995. From 1993 to 1995, he was undersecretary of the treasury for international affairs.
Prior to joining the Department of the Treasury, Summers worked at the World Bank from 1991 to 1993. He served as chief economist and vice president of development economics. He was a member of the loan committee, helped design country assistance plans, and had responsibility for research, statistics, and external training programs.
Summers was born on Nov. 30, 1954, in New Haven, Connecticut. He received a bachelor’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1975 and a doctorate in economics from Harvard University in 1982. From 1979 to 1982, he taught economics at MIT. During 1982 and 1983, Summers served as a domestic policy economist on the Council of Economic Advisers. He was a professor of economics at Harvard from 1983 to 1993. In 1993, Summers was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal, which is given every two years to an outstanding American economist under the age of 40.
In 2001, Summers returned to Harvard to serve as president of the university, a post he held until 2006. In 2009 and 2010, he served as director of the White House National Economic Council and as a chief economic adviser to President Barack Obama. Summers later served on the boards of multiple technology companies. In 2023, for example, he joined the board of OpenAI, a company specializing in artificial intelligence.
