Gary Gensler was nominated by President Joseph R. Biden to serve as Chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on February 3, 2021, confirmed by the U.S. Senate on April 14, 2021, and sworn into office on April 17, 2021.
Before joining the SEC, Gensler was professor of the Practice of Global Economics and Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, co-director of MIT’s Fintech@CSAIL, and senior advisor to the MIT Media Lab Digital Currency Initiative. From 2017-2019, he served as chair of the Maryland Financial Consumer Protection Commission.
Gensler was formerly chair of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, leading the Obama Administration’s reform of the $400 trillion swaps market. He also was senior advisor to U.S. Senator Paul Sarbanes in writing the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002), and was undersecretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance and assistant secretary of the Treasury from 1997-2001.
In recognition for his service, he was awarded the Alexander Hamilton Award, the U.S. Treasury’s highest honor. He is a recipient of the 2014 Frankel Fiduciary Prize.
Prior to his public service, Gensler worked at Goldman Sachs, where he became a partner in the Mergers & Acquisition department, headed the firm’s Media Group, led fixed income & currency trading in Asia, and was co-head of Finance, responsible for the firm's worldwide Controllers and Treasury efforts.
A native of Baltimore, Md., Gensler earned his undergraduate degree in economics in 1978 and his MBA from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, in 1979. He has three daughters.