Rosie Rios

With the advent of the financial crisis in 2008 and the role that the federal government played to put the U.S. economy on the road to recovery, what did we learn from that process and how can we plan for continued stability? As one of the original members of the U.S. Department of the Treasury/Federal Reserve Transition Team and then Treasurer of the United States for the following seven years, Treasurer Rios provides her perspectives on lessons learned from her tenure during one of the most consequential times of our nation’s economic history.

Throughout her almost eight-year tenure as the CEO of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the United States Mint, Treasurer Rios used her business background to prepare her almost 4,000 employees to increase production as resources in the federal government continued to be limited. In doing so, not only was she able to save over $1 billion in the first five years, she also raised morale at both bureaus to unprecedented levels during record production while earning the respect of her colleagues and union partnerships to set a course for future success.

As the first Senate-confirmed woman in the U.S. Department of the Treasury during the Obama administration and the only woman confirmed in Treasury in all of 2009, Treasurer Rios discusses her almost eight-year journey on how she evolved from her private world of finance to her public world of empowerment. From initiating the efforts to place a woman on the front of our nation’s currency for the first time in over a century to starting Treasury’s annual Women in Finance Symposiums leading to the cover of Time Magazine, Treasurer Rios’ goal is to make structural changes to how women and girls are valued in history and in what we see in our everyday lives from the classroom to the boardroom. As she continues her strategic partnerships to develop additional educational and public initiatives, hear how she successfully challenged and influenced her colleagues and eventually the nation – one male at a time. Her goal is to inspire Awareness and Action as we prepare for the suffrage centennial in 2020 and our nation’s 250th anniversary in 2026.

Following Treasurer Rios’ historic tenure during her almost eight years in the U.S. Department of the Treasury as Treasurer of the United States, she became a Visiting Scholar at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard. In 2016 she launched her first educational project, Teachers Righting History, followed by EMPOWERMENT 2020 at Harvard. She learned very quickly how her initiatives were resonating with girls AND boys and began her journey of focusing her efforts on Millennials and Post-Millennials. Learn how her findings about these next generations will impact the social, economic, and political fabric of our country and what we can do to guide them to become successful, engaged, healthy and empowered future leaders.

The train has left the station. It’s no longer a matter of if but when digital currencies will become a globally accepted and legitimate option. So what does that mean for traditional financial institutions, central banks and most importantly, consumers? Rios oversaw consumer payments policy and the Future of Money initiative as Treasurer of the United States from 2008 through 2016. As Chair of the Advanced Counterfeit Deterrence Steering Committee, she was also a key liaison with Federal Reserve and the Cash Product Office along with Secret Service on monetary security and financial crimes. She now serves on the board of Ripple and shares her perspectives on the framework that is needed to democratize money.