Rebecca Patterson is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). A globally recognized investor and macro-economic researcher with more than twenty-five years of experience across the U.S., Europe, and Asia, Patterson studies how politics and policy intersect with economic trends to drive financial markets.
Patterson is currently an independent director at Vanguard, a global asset manager with more than $10 trillion in assets under management. Through the Washington Speakers Bureau, she is also a frequently requested speaker on macro-economic and financial market topics, where she provides actionable insights to a wide array of companies and industry organizations.
Previously, Patterson was chief investment strategist for Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund. From 2012 through 2019, Patterson was chief investment officer of Bessemer Trust, a multi-family office where she managed $85 billion in client assets. Before joining Bessemer, Patterson spent more than fifteen years at JPMorgan, where she worked as a researcher in the firm’s investment bank in Europe, Singapore, and the U.S., served as chief investment strategist in the asset management arm of the firm, and ran the Private Bank’s global currency and commodity trading desk. Patterson's transition to finance came after several years working as a journalist, covering financial markets, policy, and politics in the U.S. and Europe.
In addition to her work with CFR, Patterson has supported the Federal Reserve throughout her career, including serving on the New York Federal Reserve’s Investor Advisory and Foreign Exchange committees. She is a member of the Trilateral Commission and the Economic Club of New York and serves on the University of Florida’s Investment Corporation Advisory Board. She chairs the Council for Economic Education and is a member of the board of the Bretton Woods Committee. Patterson's insights are frequently sought after by the media; she co-hosted the first-ever television program dedicated to foreign-exchange markets: CNBC’s “Money in Motion.”
Patterson holds BS in journalism from the University of Florida, an MA in international relations from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and an MBA from New York University. She was included in American Banker’s list of "Most Powerful Women in Finance" for six consecutive years and was named to Forbes’ "50 over 50" in 2022.
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