Opportunities Come from Surprising Places. Be Ready to Pounce
Written by Raphael Bostic
My job brings me into contact with many people. In the past few weeks alone, I have talked with people in places as far afield as Franklin County, Alabama and Frankfurt, Germany. Yet, I can say, without reservation, that my visit to King’s College was as memorable as any in my eight years as President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
Punting along the River Cam, visiting John Maynard Keynes’s office, touring the breathtaking campus of King’s College, and enjoying dinner in the ambience of a warm summer evening — these moments were certainly ‘kid-in-a-candy-store’ type stuff.
And then there was the conversation with students and the Provost, Gillian Tett - an altogether fascinating few hours. Both Gillian’s and the students’ questions compelled me to think hard about monetary policy, trade and tariffs, central bank independence, leadership, and entrepreneurship.
In the wake of such a thought-provoking exchange, I’ll reflect on the conversation, describing a couple of programs I helped to inaugurate that I think are making the Atlanta Fed better and focusing on how entrepreneurship and leadership feature as a part of this.
As head of a century-old institution with a mission prescribed by the national legislature, my role may not appear especially entrepreneurial. Yet, as President of one of 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks in a decentralised system, I actually have a certain amount of autonomy to shape the Bank’s operation.
I don’t take decisions lightly, and with this autonomy, I cultivate a collaborative leadership style. While everyone has a role to play in a healthy organisation, a leader establishes a tone and must bring everyone along with them. We have, in our institution, a 16-person committee that advises on all major issues but a few years into my tenure, we launched a concerted program to push decision-making authority down through the organisation.
This was in an effort to live the value of inclusion that truly effective leadership embodies. These aren’t just words, they take concrete form. The CEO and I, for example, meet with each employee on their first day to let them know we are excited to have them with us, because each person brings a unique lens for interpreting the world we share.
In setting the tone as a leader, there are several areas where I have a specific passion. Soon after my arrival, the leadership team and I enshrined, as a guiding mission, a goal to enhance economic mobility and resilience for all of our citizens. That strategy takes many forms in practice, and there isn’t space for exhaustive details. But suffice it to say that the Fed serves all Americans, and therefore we should understand the economic needs of all Americans.
That’s not easy. Local economies in our District, for instance, range from thriving metropolitan centers like Atlanta and Nashville, to rural areas struggling to retain young people. Unfortunately, a significant number of the American geographies with the widest disparities in opportunity lie in our region. Underserved neighborhoods in cities like Atlanta offer bleak prospects for mobility, even as places a few miles away rank among the nation’s most upwardly mobile. Despite the difficulties, perseverance is an important part of leadership and is made easier by a true belief in the work.
Relatedly, I elevated our grassroots intelligence gathering apparatus, which we call the Regional Economic Information Network, or REIN. Now, REIN predated my arrival, but our policymaking staff and I refined a system to synthesise the information our field representatives gather and to make it an essential input into our policy deliberations. We also developed an Economic Survey Research Center to augment aggregate data with input from hundreds of business decision-makers. Our survey results now represent a time series sufficient to make the information another vital input into my policy stance. I would argue that anecdotal and survey input like this is especially important in times of widespread uncertainty, like the kind we see today, because the aggregate data are inherently backward-looking. The “soft” data can help us anticipate what likely lies ahead.
So that’s a bit about how an entrepreneurial bent influences my leadership and how our Bank does its work.
But an entrepreneurial frame of mind has also shaped my career. I learned long ago that opportunities come at unexpected times from unexpected sources, and when they come, you pounce. This is at the heart of an entrepreneurial spirit. That’s a pattern that has defined my career, and it’s how I landed my job as a monetary policymaker.
Not only have important career opportunities come unexpectedly, but I’ve often been not the first, nor even second choice to fill openings. In the late 1990s, I was researching community finance at the Fed Board of Governors. It was fulfilling work and taught me the value of diverse perspectives in crafting thorough analyses of problems. My team comprised various ages and worldviews, and the leader insisted we all approve every paragraph before publishing any work.
I was content. But a professor approached me about a position at the University of Southern California (USC). Figuring I had little to lose, I applied. I was the third choice. Neither of the first two candidates wound up taking the job, and I accepted.
At USC, I did a lot of work focused on real estate finance. In addition to supporting a leading real estate center, I studied Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the federal government-sponsored housing agencies in the US. At that time, housing economics was an academic backwater. Then the Global Financial Crisis erupted, US housing markets cratered, Fannie and Freddie collapsed, and the administration in Washington, DC, suddenly needed housing finance experts.
They contacted me as—yes—the third choice for a politically appointed post. Again, an opportunity came out of nowhere. The role was incredibly rich, and I learned a lot about leadership and management; lessons that I carry with me today. The role was also temporary—as jobs in a presidential administration are—and so after a few years I returned to USC.
Several years later, another call came out of the blue—from a recruiter gauging my interest in becoming president of the Atlanta Fed.
With little formal background in monetary policy, I thought I had no shot. So, I was totally unguarded in the interviews. That allowed me to project vigorous energy, curiosity, and leadership, and management perspectives that helped me to land the gig. It’s proven to be the most rewarding work of my life.
I’ll close with three pieces of advice.
First, as the alternative to the alternative for several of these positions, I could have entered the jobs fueled by resentment. That won’t work. Instead, the proper approach is, no matter the task, to strive to make that job so much yours that no one could imagine anyone else doing it.
Second, those last three positions—at USC, in the Obama administration, and now at the Atlanta Fed—were not on my radar even a few months before I started. The point: Keep your eyes open all the time and think creatively about what opportunity can look like.
Finally, chase your passion. Truly caring will motivate you in difficult times. And that's how you become a great leader.
Raphael Bostic is the 15th president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. He is responsible for all the Bank's activities, including monetary policy, bank supervision and regulation, and payment services. He is member of the Federal Open Market Committee, the monetary policymaking body of the Federal Reserve System. Before joining the Atlanta Fed, Bostic was with the Sol Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California (USC). He has also served as assistant secretary for policy development and research at the Department of Housing and Urban Development and spent several years as an economist at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. Bostic earned a PhD in economics from Stanford University and his undergraduate degree from Harvard.