Nancy H. Teeters

Nancy H. Teeters joined the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on September 18, 1978, and served until June 27, 1984. She was the first woman to serve on the Board of Governors.

Teeters was born in Marion, Indiana. She attended public schools in Marion and obtained a bachelor’s degree in economics from Oberlin College in 1952. Two years later, Teeters earned a master’s degree in economics from the University of Michigan, where she was subsequently a teaching fellow and did further graduate work in economics in 1956 and 1957. In 1955 and 1956, she was an instructor at the University of Maryland's overseas division in Stuttgart, West Germany.

Teeter’s association with the Federal Reserve began in 1957, when she joined the Division of Research and Statistics at the Board of Governors. She was a staff economist in the division’s government finance section until early 1966, taking leave from the Federal Reserve from 1962 to 1963 to serve as an economist on the President's Council of Economic Advisers.

Teeters left her position at the Board of Governors to become a fiscal economist with the Planning and Analysis staff of the Bureau of the Budget (which became the Office of Management and Budget), a role she held from 1966 to 1970. She was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution from 1970 to late 1973, when she became a senior specialist with the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress. From late 1974 until her appointment to the Board of Governors, Teeters was assistant staff director and chief economist for the Committee on the Budget of the House of Representatives of the US Congress.

After leaving the Board of Governors, Teeters joined IBM as director of economics. In March 1986, she became the second woman to be named a vice president at IBM. She supervised the preparation of macroeconomic forecasting of US and foreign economies as well as micro-economics forecasting for the entire computer industry. She retired from IBM on August 1, 1990. In 1991, she became a director of Inland Steel Industries.

Teeters was active in a number of organizations. She was a member of the Advisory Board of the Institute for the Study of Educational Policy at Howard University. She also was a member of the Committee on the Status of Women at the American Economic Association, a member of the board for the American Finance Association, and president and member of the board of the National Economists Club.

Teeter’s publications include a series of studies, of which she was coauthor, for the Brookings Institution and on topics such as the US budget, Social Security taxation, and employment.

Written by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. See disclaimer.