Hester Peirce was nominated by President Obama to serve as a commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission. She is the director of the Financial Markets Working Group at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.
A university-based research center, the Mercatus Center advances knowledge about how markets work to improve people’s lives by training graduate students, conducting research, and applying economics to offer solutions to society’s most pressing problems. The stated mission of the center “is to generate knowledge and understanding of the institutions that affect the freedom to prosper, and to find sustainable solutions that overcome the barriers preventing individuals from living free, prosperous, and peaceful lives.”
Before becoming director of the center Peirce was senior counsel to the chair of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. Earlier, she was a staff attorney in the Division of Investment Management at the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Pierce is a graduate of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and Yale Law School.