For immediate release: September 19, 2017
Paula Tkac has been promoted to senior vice president and associate director of research, announced Raphael Bostic, president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Bostic also announced other promotions and new appointments in the research division. Mark Jensen has been promoted to vice president, leading the financial research economics team, Laurel Graefe has been promoted to assistant vice president and deputy regional executive in the Atlanta Fed's Nashville Branch, and Ed Nosal will join the Atlanta Fed on November 1, as vice president leading the micro/macro research economics team.
Tkac joined the Atlanta Fed in 2000 and was promoted to assistant vice president in 2010 and vice president in 2011. Most recently, she led the financial markets group in the research division and served as a policy adviser. Tkac conducts research on various financial market topics, including investor decision making, the mutual fund industry, financial regulation, and the recent financial crisis and policy responses. Her research has won two William F. Sharpe Awards presented by the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis.
In addition to publishing in academic journals, Tkac frequently speaks to academic and practitioner groups and has appeared on C-SPAN and as an op-ed writer in the Wall Street Journal.
Before the Atlanta Fed, Tkac was on the faculty of the finance department at the University of Notre Dame. She earned her bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in economics from the University of Chicago.
Jensen started his career with the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta in 2005 as a financial economist and associate policy adviser. Since then, he has held positions of increasing responsibility. Jensen is an associate editor of the Journal of Empirical Finance and has published works in the Journal of Econometrics, Econometric Theory, the Journal of Monetary Economics, and the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking. His research has won two awards: the 2012 Arnold Zellner Award from the Journal of Econometrics and the 2016 Best Paper Award from Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics and Econometrics. He is a past president and treasurer of the Society for Nonlinear Dynamics and Econometrics.
Jensen earned his bachelor's degree in economics from Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. He earned his master's and doctoral degrees in economics from Washington University in St. Louis.
Nosal currently serves as vice president and senior research adviser in the economic research department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Prior to working at the Chicago Fed, he was a vice president in the economic research department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. Nosal has also held a number of research positions at academic institutions throughout the world. Nosal's research focuses on fundamental issues related to money, banking, and payments. His work has been published in journals such as the Journal of Economic Theory, the Journal of Monetary Economics, the Journal of Finance, and the Review of Economic Studies.
Nosal earned a bachelor's degree from Queen's University in Ontario, Canada; a master's degree from McMaster University in Ontario, Canada; and a doctor of philosophy in economics from Queen's University.
Graefe joined the Atlanta Fed in 2007, specializing in international economic analysis. She held positions of increasing responsibility in the analyst track before being promoted to economic policy specialist, responsible for managing the energy and inflation analysis teams. In 2013, she became a director for the Atlanta Fed's Regional Economic Information Network and, in 2015, relocated to the Nashville branch, where she now has a proven record of garnering insights from business leaders to help inform the monetary policy process.
Graefe earned her bachelor's degree summa cum laude from Agnes Scott College and a master of business administration with honors from Vanderbilt's Owen Graduate School of Management in Nashville, Tennessee.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta serves the Sixth Federal Reserve District, which encompasses Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and sections of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee. As part of the nation's central banking system, the Atlanta Fed participates in setting national monetary policy, supervises numerous commercial banks, and provides a variety of financial services to depository institutions and the U.S. government.