Laura D’Andrea Tyson is an influential scholar of economics and public policy and an expert on trade and competitiveness who has also served as a presidential adviser. She is a distinguished professor of the graduate school at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. She also chairs the Board of Trustees at UC Berkeley’s Blum Center for Developing Economies, which aims to develop solutions to global poverty. She is the former faculty director of the Berkeley Haas Institute for Business and Social Impact, which she launched in 2013. She served as interim dean of the Haas School from July to December 2018, and served previously as dean from 1998 to 2001.
Tyson was a member of President Clinton’s cabinet between 1993 and 1996. She served as chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers from 1993 to 1995 and as director of the White House National Economic Council from 1995 to 1996. She was the first woman to serve in those positions.
Much of Tyson’s recent research focuses on the effects of automation on the future of work. She is the co-organizer of WITS (Work and Intelligent Tools and System), an interdisciplinary faculty group created to explore the impacts of digital technologies and artificial intelligence on working, earning, and learning.
She has also devoted considerable policy attention to the links between women’s rights and national economic performance. At the World Economic Forum (WEF), she is a member of the Global Future Council on the New Agenda for Equity and Social Justice. She is the co-author of the WEF Annual Global Gender Gap Report, which ranks nations on economic, political, education, and health gender gaps. She is also the co-author of Leave No One Behind, a report for the United Nations’ High-Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment (2016).
In addition to serving as dean of Berkeley Haas, Tyson served as dean of London Business School from 2002 until 2006. She serves on three corporate boards and several advisory boards for several nonprofit and for-profit organizations.
Tyson is the author of numerous reports, case studies, academic papers and books on competitiveness, industrial policy, international trade, and sustainable business practices. She is also regular contributor to Project Syndicate, and is a frequent media commentator on issues of U.S. and global trade and economics, high-tech competition, automation and artificial intelligence, and women’s economic empowerment.
