Roger Ferguson, president and chief executive officer of TIAA-CREF, will speak to students, faculty and staff of the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas on Wednesday, Aug. 27, at 2 p.m. in the auditorium of the Donald W. Reynolds Center for Enterprise Development.

Ferguson, a former vice chairman of the Board of Governors of the U.S. Federal Reserve System, is scheduled to speak on the U.S. and global economies, financial literacy and career preparation for students.

As the only member of the board of governors in Washington D.C. on Sept. 11, 2001, Ferguson led the Fed’s initial response to the terrorist attacks, taking actions that kept the U.S. financial system functioning while reassuring the global financial community that the U.S. economy would not be paralyzed.

Prior to joining TIAA-CREF in April 2008, Ferguson was head of financial services for Swiss Re, chairman of Swiss Re America Holding Corp. and a member of the company’s executive committee. From 1984 to 1997, he was an associate and partner at McKinsey & Company. He began his career as an attorney at the New York City office of Davis Polk & Wardwell.

Ferguson is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and a member of the academy’s Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences. He serves on the board of International Flavors & Fragrances Inc. and on the advisory board of Brevan Howard Asset Management LLP. He is chairman of the Business-Higher Education Forum and a board member of the Committee for Economic Development, the American Council of Life Insurers, the Institute for Advanced Study and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He is a member of the Economic Club of New York, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Group of Thirty.

Ferguson serves on the Congressional Budget Office's Panel of Economic Advisers. He served on President Obama's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness as well as its predecessor, the Economic Recovery Advisory Board, and he co-chaired the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on the Long-Run Macro-Economic Effects of the Aging U.S. Population.

Ferguson holds a B.A., J.D. and a Ph.D. in economics, all from Harvard University.

TIAA-CREF is a national financial services organization with more than $600 billion in assets under management and is the leading provider of retirement services in the academic, research, medical and cultural fields.