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.

What role does money play today and how has that changed over time? With the rise of

electronic commerce and alternative forms of payment, what does this mean for cash and more importantly, how will this influence spending habits? Consumer behavior is still one of the hardest things to change. Optionality remains the top priority for how people think about payments, investments and even what we see on our money. As the former Chair of the Advanced Counterfeit Deterrence Committee and the one who initiated and led the efforts to redesign U.S. currency to include the portrait of a woman for the first time in over a century, Treasurer Rios explains how demand for U.S. currency continues to rise around the world and the profound effect it has on the consumer, the retailer and the economy.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are over 55 million Latinos in the U.S with a

projected growth expected to reach about 106 million in 2050. Today, Mexicans represent over 60 percent of the Latino population with the next highest Latino constituency (Puerto Ricans) representing less than 10 percent. Treasurer Rios explains how Mexico and the U.S. are

inextricably tied economically, socially and culturally and what this means for our collective futures. She also shares how she designed and implemented an innovative strategy to register Latinos in Virginia and implementing an ambitious Get Out the Vote initiative leading up to the presidential election of 2008. In doing so, Treasurer Rios engaged an elaborate network of community stakeholders, political strategists and an Army of Angels to help accomplish what was seen as the impossible and may have very well have been the tipping point and a turning point for the impact of the Latino vote.