Kevin Warsh Biography: Early Life, Career, Wife, Children & Net Worth
Kevin Warsh (born April 13, 1970) is an American financier and bank executive who served on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors from 2006 to 2011. On January 30, 2026, President Donald Trump announced that he was named to succeed Fed Chair Jerome Powell, whose term ends later that year..
Kevin Warsh Biography
Warsh was born in Albany, New York, to a Jewish household as the youngest of three children to Judith and Robert Warsh. He grew up in nearby Loudonville, New York, and graduated from Shaker High School in Latham, New York.
He earned a Bachelor of Arts in public policy from Stanford University in 1992, with a focus on economics and political science. He subsequently went to Harvard Law School and graduated with honours in 1995.
He also studied market economics and debt capital markets at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and Harvard Business School.
Career
Despite his impressive resume, Warsh has stated that much of his understanding of how the economy works stems from his upstate New York upbringing, telling the State University of New York at Albany’s School of Business in 2007.
Warsh proceeded to Wall Street after law school, where he worked for Morgan Stanley & Co. between 1995 and 2002. During his employment, he worked in mergers and acquisitions and was executive director before leaving the firm in 2002 to serve in the Bush White House.
His primary areas of interest were regulatory policy and consumer protection, and he also served as the National Economic Council’s executive secretary. In 2006, Bush nominated Warsh to become one of the Fed’s seven governors.
At 35, he was the youngest person to ever hold the position. Warsh’s Wall Street background came in handy during his stint at the Fed, where he acted as a liaison with Wall Street during the height of the Great Recession.
During the height of the crisis, Warsh worked closely with then-Fed Chair Ben Bernanke and New York Federal Reserve Bank president (and future Treasury Secretary) Timothy Geithner to find a way for his old business, Morgan Stanley, to survive.
He was also a member of the Fed that implemented a program known as “quantitative easing,” in which central banks (including the Fed) acquire bonds to stimulate the economy and prevent deflation or recession.
Warsh, one of the few Republican governors (Bernanke was another, chosen by Bush in 2005), became more concerned that quantitative easing would lead to inflation.
Although his tenure was not slated to expire until January 2018, Warsh took the extraordinary step of resigning in March 2011.
He had openly expressed concern about the Fed’s intention to purchase $600 billion in bonds in an effort to lower interest rates and promote greater bank lending. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, he called the policy “limited, circumscribed, and subject to regular review.”
Since leaving the Fed, Warsh has been a member of the Group of Thirty (G-30, an influential group of academics and financiers focused on global economic issues), a UPS board member, a fellow at the Hoover Institution, and a lecturer at Stanford Business School.
He has also stated that the policy convictions that prompted him to leave the Fed in 2011 have only strengthened. Warsh was a contender for Fed head in 2017, but President Donald Trump finally appointed Powell.
He has acted as an unofficial adviser to Trump and was considered for the position of Treasury Secretary in the second Trump administration, which eventually went to Scott Bessent.
Warsh’s name resurfaced in the spring of 2025 and eaa chosen on January 30th according to Robin J Brooks , when Trump publicly considered firing Powell. Warsh, for his part, stated in an April 2025 speech to the G-30 that he feels Fed policy has gone horribly wrong, claiming: “Forays far afield—for all seasons and all reasons—have led to systematic errors in the conduct of macroeconomic policy.”
Kevin Warsh Wife
Warsh married Jane Lauder in 2002, a granddaughter and heiress of Estée Lauder who had worked for the family business, the Estée Lauder firm, for many years.
The pair resides in Manhattan. Lauder, formerly the general manager of Origins, has been Clinique’s Global Brand President since 2014. According to Forbes, her net worth was $2 billion on September 27, 2017.
Ronald Lauder is Warren’s father-in-law. Warsh made Fortune magazine’s “40 under 40” list in 2009.
Kevin Warsh Net Worth
Kevin Warsh’s net worth is expected to be between $8 million and $10 million by early 2026. His wealth is mostly derived from his successful career in strategic investing and his present position as a board member of Coupang Inc, where he owns shares worth more than $8 million.
