Office Artifact: Annamaria Lusardi’s Photo with Ben Bernanke

In the fall of 2010, I was invited to give a seminar at the Federal Reserve. The Fed is just a couple of blocks away from the George Washington University School of Business, where I’d recently moved from Dartmouth College. At lunch with some Fed economists that day, I asked if it would be possible to meet with Chairman Ben Bernanke. The looks on their faces ranged from surprise to disbelief. I could almost read their minds: This newcomer thinks she can just walk in and meet with the chairman?

As I tried to explain, I had studied with Bernanke when I was a graduate student at Princeton. (In several of his classes, he told us about starting his career at Stanford GSB, where he taught from 1979 to 1985.) We’d spoken a lot about my research on saving. My work was focused on the nascent field of financial literacy, and Bernanke was a strong advocate of its importance, not just for individuals’ economic well-being but the country’s. I figured that, given our common interests and proximity, we might do some projects together.

After my initial meeting at the Fed, a kind soul sent me the email address of Chairman Bernanke’s secretary with a note that assumed I would not have the audacity to actually contact her. I wrote to her right away. She responded the same day (I still remember her name: Rita), and we set up a meeting with the chairman the following week.

I must admit I became increasingly nervous as the time approached. As I went through three layers of security to get to his office, I became even more tense. Chairman Bernanke welcomed me with a big smile, and we talked about our time at Princeton and my move to Washington, D.C. Most importantly, we talked about how the Fed could help with research on financial literacy. We agreed to start a joint seminar series on the topic.

That seminar series lasted for more than 10 years, well beyond Bernanke’s tenure as Fed chair. And it lives on: It recently moved to the GSB and has become the Financial Literacy Colloquia, a series of lectures and discussions sponsored by the Initiative for Financial Decision-Making, which I direct.

Chairman Bernanke also agreed to teach a course at GW’s business school on the role of the Federal Reserve. He gave the first four lectures, and then a group of academics, including myself, did the rest. (You can bet it was very difficult to teach after him!)

We took a group photo at the end of the course in the spring of 2012. I keep it in my office as a reminder that you do not get what you want if you do not ask for it.