Sheila Bair Steps Down From the Presidency of Washington College in Maryland

The board of visitors and governors of Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, announced that Sheila Bair has resigned her position as president of the college. When she became president in 2015, she was the first woman to hold the position in the college’s 234-year history.

President Bair cited family reasons for her decision to step down after two years of a five-year term. But published reports suggested that there were strains between the college’s board and the president.

Bair served as head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation from 2006 to 2011. Earlier, she was Dean’s Professor of Financial Regulatory Policy in the School of Management at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. After leaving the FDIC, Barr was a senior adviser to the Pew Charitable Trusts. She is the author of Bull by the Horns: Fighting to Save Main Street From Wall Street and Wall Street From Itself (Free Press, 2012).

Bair is a graduate of the University of Kansas and the University of Kansas School of Law.