BEA Advisory Committee

Louise Sheiner

Brookings Institution

BEA Advisory Committee Chair

Louise Sheiner is the Robert S. Kerr Senior Fellow in Economic Studies and policy director for the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at Brookings.

She previously served as a senior economist in the Fiscal Analysis Section for the Research and Statistics Division with the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. In her time at the Fed, she was also appointed deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the U.S. Treasury Department and served as senior staff economist for the Council of Economic Advisers. Before joining the Fed, Sheiner was an economist at the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

Sheiner pursues research on federal, state, and local fiscal policy, productivity measurement, demographic change, health policy, and other fiscal and macroeconomic issues.

She received her Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University, as well as an undergraduate degree in biology from Harvard.

Marshall Reinsdorf

Economic consultant

BEA Advisory Committee Vice Chair

Marshall Reinsdorf is an economic consultant specializing in prices, national accounts, and productivity and a supporting editor of the 2025 System of National Accounts.

Before becoming a consultant, he served in several U.S. government posts and gained experience around the world. Reinsdorf was chief of BEA's National Economic Accounts research group. He was a senior economist in the International Monetary Fund's Statistics Department, a job he took after many years conducting technical assistance and training missions for IMF as a short-term expert. He served as a research economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

Reinsdorf has published extensively on economic measurement issues and is a past president of the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth. He is a recipient of the Julius Shiskin Memorial Award for Economic Statistics.

Reinsdorf received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a bachelor's degree from Amherst College.

Alan J. Auerbach

University of California, Berkeley

Alan J. Auerbach is the Robert D. Burch Professor of Economics and Law, director of the Burch Center for Tax Policy and Public Finance, and former chair of the Economics Department at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and previously taught at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania.

Auerbach was deputy chief of staff of the U.S. Joint Committee on Taxation in 1992 and has been a consultant to government agencies and institutions in the United States and abroad.

He served as an executive committee member and vice president of the American Economic Association; as editor of that association's Journal of Economic Perspectives and American Economic Journal: Economic Policy; and as president of the National Tax Association and the Western Economic Association International.

He received his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University and his B.A. in economics and mathematics from Yale University.

Julia Coronado

MacroPolicy Perspectives

Julia Coronado is president and founder of the economic research firm MacroPolicy Perspectives LLC and a clinical associate professor at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin.

Previously, she was chief economist at Graham Capital Management and the global investment bank BNP Paribas, and a senior economist at Barclays Capital. She served as a staff economist at the Federal Reserve Board.

Coronado has published scholarly articles about pension finances, Social Security, retirement saving, data collection, and monetary policy. She is a member of the Economic Advisory Panel of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Economic Studies Council at the Brookings Institution.

She served on the board of the National Association of Business Economists and as president of the New York Association of Business Economists.

Coronado received her B.A. in economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin.

Eli Fenichel

Yale University

Eli Fenichel is the Knobloch Family Professor of Natural Resource Economics at Yale University. His research focuses on measuring and valuing natural resource assets, with a specific interest in the connection to national balance sheets and national accounts.

Fenichel co-led the experts group on national accounting for the ocean and ocean economy, which is part of the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy. He also served as an outside advisor on the development of valuation methods for the United Nations System of Environmental Economic Accounting. Fenichel co-led Yale's environmental data science initiative and serves on Yale's committee for data driven social science.

In 2008, Fenichel began his academic career as an assistant professor of ecological- and bio-economics at Arizona State University. He joined the Yale faculty in 2012 as an assistant professor of bioeconomics and ecosystem management. From 2021-23, he served as the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy's assistant director for natural resource economics and accounting, where he helped organize the National Strategy for Statistics for Environmental-Economic Decisions.

Fenichel has an M.S. in agricultural economics and Ph.D. in fisheries and wildlife, with a focus on natural resource economics, from Michigan State University. He has a B.S. in wildlife ecology from the University of Maine.

Keith Hall

George Mason University

Keith Hall is a distinguished visiting fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Among his notable leadership roles, Hall was director of the Congressional Budget Office from 2015-2019 and commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics from 2008-2012. He also served as chief economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) and the White House Council of Economic Advisors.

Earlier in his career, Hall was chief economist at the U.S. Department of Commerce, where he provided technical advice regarding the scope, emphasis, and state of the economic and statistical activities of the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis. He also worked for 10 years as a senior international economist at USITC.

Before coming to George Mason in 2022, Hall was a professor at Georgetown University's McCort School of Public Policy. He also served in economics faculty positions at the universities of Arkansas and Missouri.

Hall received his M.S. and Ph.D. in economics from Purdue University and his B.A. in economics and psychology from the University of Virginia.

Carlos Herrera

The Coca-Cola Company, North America

Carlos Herrera is chief economist for The Coca-Cola Company, North America. He has spent the last 31 years at the company, serving in operations, finance, marketing, and strategic planning.

The main thrust of Herrera’s work is to increase the visibility of ‘what’s to come’ through a deeper understanding of the foodservice industry from an economic perspective. His forecasts are a key input to the development of the company’s strategic and operational plans. Herrera shares his insights on the impact of the economy on consumers and the restaurant industry with leaders of foodservice companies around the world.

Prior to coming to Coca-Cola, Herrera worked for 8 years at Federal Express. He is a member of the board of the National Association for Business Economics, the National Business Economists’ Issues Council, and the Harvard Industry Economists Discussion Group.

Herrera received his master’s degree in industrial and systems engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and an undergraduate degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education.

Nela Richardson

Automatic Data Processing Inc. (ADP)

Nela Richardson is the chief economist at ADP and co-head of the ADP Research Institute. Previously, she was principal and investment strategist at the financial services firm Edward Jones, where she analyzed and interpreted economic trends and financial market conditions and recommended investment strategies.

Richardson is also the former chief economist at national real estate brokerage and technology company Redfin Corp. She held research positions at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies, and Freddie Mac. She served as an adjunct finance professor at the Carey Business School at Johns Hopkins University.

Richardson has served on the boards of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Business Economists.

She received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Maryland, College Park, a master's degree in economics from the University of Pennsylvania, and a bachelor's degree from Indiana University, Bloomington.

Heather Stephens

West Virginia University

Heather Stephens is director of the Regional Research Institute at West Virginia University, as well as an associate professor of resource economics and management and an adjunct associate professor of economics there. Her research focuses on regional economic development and the differing impacts of policies across regions.

She serves as the chair of the Technical Advisory Committee for the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development, on the Advisory Council for the Ohio River Valley Institute, and on the editorial boards of Growth and Change and Regional Science Policy and Practice.

Previously, Stephens was an assistant professor of economics and the director of economic research at California State University, Long Beach. She has experience working for a U.S. congressman, on strategic partnership development for a Fortune 100 company, as a local economic development director, and on regional economic development at a university-based applied research institute.

Stephens has a Ph.D. and an MBA from The Ohio State University and a bachelor's from Duke University.

Diane Swonk

KPMG

Diane Swonk is chief economist and managing director at KPMG U.S.

Before joining KPMG, Swonk had her own economic consulting firm and worked at Grant Thornton. For more than 10 years she was senior managing director and chief economist at Mesirow Financial. She started her career with First Chicago Bank, which later became part of Bank One, rising to director of research and chief economist.

Swonk has served as a nonpartisan advisor to the Congressional Budget Office and the White House National Economic Council. She regularly briefs the regional Federal Reserve banks and the Board of Governors and has provided congressional testimony on income inequality and economic statistics.

Swonk, a fellow of the National Association for Business Economics, serves on the NABE statistics committee and the Economic Advisory Board of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

She has master's and bachelor's degrees in economics from the University of Michigan and an MBA from the University of Chicago.

Susan Wachter

The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

Susan Wachter is the Albert Sussman Professor of Real Estate and a professor of finance at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

She is the author of more than 200 scholarly publications and the recipient of several awards for teaching excellence at The Wharton School. She co-founded and is co-director of the Penn Institute for Urban Research. She also founded and serves as director of Wharton's Geographical Information Systems Lab.

Previously, Wachter was chairperson of the Real Estate Department and professor of real estate and finance. She was the editor of Real Estate Economics from 1997 to 1999 and currently serves on the editorial boards of several real estate journals.

Wachter received the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005. She has served on multiple boards, including the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee of Fannie Mae and the Office of Financial Research Advisory Committee of the U.S. Treasury.

Jeff Werling

Economist

Jeff Werling retired from the U.S. Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in 2022 after serving as director of the macroeconomic analysis division since 2016. His division was in charge of producing CBO’s economic projections, which underlie the agency’s federal budget projections. That included examining labor force participation, productivity growth, and inflation and interest rates, as well as modeling proposed changes in federal tax and spending policies.

Before going to the CBO, Werling was the director of Inforum, a research center that was housed in the Department of Economics at the University of Maryland, College Park. Previously, he held positions as an international and industry economist with the Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation and Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates. He has also contributed several consensus economic forecasts.

Werling received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a B.S. in mineral economics from the Pennsylvania State University.

Teryn Zmuda

National Association of Counties

Teryn Zmuda is the chief research officer and chief economist at the National Association of Counties (NACo), overseeing the Programs and Practices Division and the Research and Data Analytics Division.

Teryn leads efforts to promote NACo as a thought leader, leveraging research and best practices to elevate the county role across the spectrum of local government authorities and policy implementation, within the nation’s intergovernmental system. She also leads NACo's economic analysis, representing the county perspective in federal policy, and guides the development of the issue-focused programmatic work, including peer learning networks and cohorts.

Teryn holds an M.A. in applied economics from George Washington University, a B.A. in sociology from the University of Maryland, and is currently pursuing a PhD in public policy and administration at George Washington University.