Herbert M. Allison, Jr.
Presdient and Chief Executive Officer
Fannie Mae
Herb Allison was appointed as president and chief executive officer of Fannie Mae in
September 2008 by Director James Lockhart of the Federal Housing Finance Agency,
as conservator of Fannie Mae.
Prior to being appointed to Fannie Mae, Mr. Allison was chairman, president, and
chief executive officer of TIAA-CREF from 2002 until his retirement in 2008.
He began his professional career in 1971 as an associate in the investment banking division
of Merrill Lynch in New York. After postings in Paris, Tehran, and London, Mr. Allison
served at various times as treasurer, director of human resources, chief financial officer,
and executive vice president for the investment banking, equity, and debt divisions
before being elected president, chief operating officer, and a member of the board of
Merrill Lynch & Co., in 1997.
After leaving Merrill Lynch in mid-1999, he served as national finance chairman for
U.S. Senator John McCain’s first presidential campaign. From 2000 to 2002, Mr. Allison
was president and chief executive officer of the Alliance for Lifelong Learning, Inc.,
a joint venture of Oxford, Stanford, and Yale universities, offering online college-level
courses to adults.
Mr. Allison is a director of Time Warner Inc., and a member of the advisory board
of the Yale School of Management and the international advisory committee of the
Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
He was a director of the New York Stock Exchange from 2003 to 2005. In recent years,
Mr. Allison also chaired the Business to Higher Education Forum and the Vietnam Education
Foundation and served on the Business Roundtable, the Financial Services Roundtable,
the board of directors of The Conference Board, the board of trustees of the Economic Club
of New York, the New York State Commission to Modernize the Regulation of Financial
Services, and the New York State Commission on Education Reform.
Mr. Allison earned a BA in philosophy from Yale University. Following four years
as an officer in the U.S. Navy, including a year in Vietnam, he received an MBA from
the Stanford Graduate School of Business.