Former Treasurer Rosie Rios became an Accidental Educator, Historian and Feminist as one of the longest serving senior Treasury officials in the Obama Administration starting with her time on the Treasury/Federal Reserve Transition Team at the height of the financial crisis in 2008. She continues her work to empower the next generation of leadership as a Visiting Scholar at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and focuses on evolving our culture one Millennial/post-Millennial at a time.
As the 43rd Treasurer of the United States, Rosie Rios initiated and led the historic effort to place a portrait of a woman on our Federal Reserve notes for the first time in U.S. history. In her role as Treasurer of the United States, Rosie was the Chief Executive Officer of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the United States Mint, including Fort Knox. Her day-to-day responsibilities included overseeing all currency and coin production activities with almost 4,000 employees in eight facilities nationwide and an annual budget of approximately $5 billion.
In the first five years of her tenure, she saved over $1 billion by implementing efficiencies and innovative concepts while meeting increased production demand and increasing employee morale at record levels. Rosie’s entire career has focused on real estate finance, economic development and urban revitalization in both the public and private sectors. Prior to her presidential appointment in Treasury, Rosie was Managing Director of Investments for a $22 billion real estate investment management firm based in San Francisco.
Following her time in Treasury, Rosie launched her first educational project, Teachers Righting History, on August 26, Equality Day, to recognize historical American women in classrooms across the country and continues to consult on large urban revitalization efforts across the country.
Rosie is a graduate of Harvard University and was selected as the first Latina in Harvard’s 380-year history to have a portrait commissioned in her honor. In January 2018, she was appointed as a member of USA 250, a Congressional Commission to commemorate the 250thanniversary of the nation’s founding in 2026. She remains active in real estate finance and is consulting on several transformational projects in the Bay Area under her “RESCUE” initiative: Real Estate for Socially Conscious Urban Empowerment.
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.
What role does money play today and how has that changed over time? Consumer behavior still remains one of the hardest things to change, but optionality remains the top priority. Treasurer Rios explains how demand for U.S. currency continues to rise and what it means for both the consumer, the retailer and the economy.
If there is one thing we learned from this last election process, it is that Millennials want something to believe in and authenticity is high on the list of what we want in our leadership. In a world where technology dominates communication, how can Millennials reconnect people-to-people in order to become future leaders themselves? Treasurer Rios explores how understanding our history will provide a clearer roadmap for understanding where we can go in a country and at a time where anything is possible.
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 leading the efforts to Treasury’s annual Women in Finance Symposiums to its first-ever Nursing Lounge to the redesign of the nation’s currency to place a woman on the front for the first time in our nation’s history, hear how she successfully challenged and influenced her colleagues and eventually the nation – one male at a time.
With the mass scale use of social media, the world has experienced a “voice for the voiceless” and has transformed our global culture in ways we would have never imagined. From the origins of the Occupy Movement, the Tea Party Movement, the Arab Spring, and others, Treasurer Rios discusses how has this impacted our governance process and what can we expect for future cultural evolutions.
Meet Rosie Rios, the 43rd Treasurer of the United States. She is closer than you think as her name is on almost $1.2 trillion of U.S. currency all around the world. Hear her personal journey of being raised as one of nine children by a single mother who sent all of her children off to college. For Rosie, that was Harvard where she started one of the most successful student activities even after 30 years and has recently been selected as the first Latina in Harvard’s 380 year-history to have a portrait commissioned in her honor. She went on to initiate and lead the government’s effort to place a woman on the front of our nation’s currency for the first time in its history, and now she is revolutionizing how students and teachers see their history, perhaps for the first time.
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 while earning the respect of her colleagues and union partnerships and set a course for future success.
In every business organization, there are the basic three pillars of capital: physical capital, financial capital and human capital. Treasurer Rios makes the case for why human capital remains the top priority in order for any business to succeed.
