Dennis Lockhart’s career includes time in the private sector, academia, and government. He recently stepped down from the position of president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. In this role, Lockhart was responsible for all the Bank’s activities including monetary policy, bank supervision and regulation, and payment services. In addition, he served on the Federal Reserve’s chief monetary policy body, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). Within the Federal Reserve System, he chaired the Conference of Presidents for his final two years and earlier chaired the Information Technology Oversight Committee.

Before becoming a central banker, Lockhart was a member of the faculty of Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service where he chaired the Master's program’s concentrations in global commerce and finance and international business–government relations. He taught courses focused on global business strategy, international finance and investment, project finance, and business-government relations. He also was an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. Simultaneously, he was chairman of the Small Enterprise Assistance Funds, a sponsor of emerging markets venture capital/private equity funds.

Prior to that, he was a managing partner of a boutique private investment firm with activity in Africa and Latin America and president of Heller International Group, a financial firm with activities in commercial finance and merchant banking in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. In 2000, he chaired the Advisory Committee of the U.S. Export-Import Bank.

At the start of his career, Lockhart held various positions, both international and domestic, with Citicorp/Citibank (now Citigroup). He worked in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Greece, Iran, Latin America and the southeast United States. He was Citicorp’s senior corporate officer and head of corporate banking for the southeast domiciled in Atlanta.

Lockhart was born and grew up in California. He was educated at Stanford University and the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He also attended the Senior Executive Program at the Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and served as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve.

Rick Rieder, Managing Director, is BlackRock's Chief Investment Officer of Global Fixed Income, and Co-head of BlackRock’s Global Fixed Income platform, a member of BlackRock's Global Operating Committee and Chairman of the firm-wide BlackRock Investment Council.

Before joining BlackRock in 2009, Mr. Rieder was President and Chief Executive Officer of R3 Capital Partners. He served as Vice Chairman and member of the Borrowing Committee for the U.S. Treasury and is currently a member of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's Investment Advisory Committee on Financial Markets.

Mr. Rieder currently serves on Alphabet’s Investment Advisory Committee and the UBS Research Advisory Board. He was awarded the Global Unconstrained Fixed Income Manager of the Year for 2015 by Institutional Investor, was nominated for Fixed Income Manager of the Year by Institutional Investor for 2014 and was inducted into the Fixed Income Analysts Society Fixed Income Hall of Fame in 2013.

From 1987 to 2008, Mr. Rieder was with Lehman Brothers, most recently as head of the firm's Global Principal Strategies team, a global proprietary investment platform. He was also global head of the firm's credit businesses, Chairman of the Corporate Bond and Loan Capital Commitment Committee, and a member of the Board of Trustees for the corporate pension fund. Before joining Lehman Brothers, Mr. Rieder was a credit analyst at SunTrust Banks in Atlanta.

Mr. Rieder earned a BBA degree in Finance from Emory University in 1983 and an MBA degree from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1987. He is a member of the board of Emory University, Emory's Business School, and the University's Investment Committee and is the Vice Chairman of the Finance Committee. Mr. Rieder is founder and chairman of the business school's BBA investment fund and community financial literacy program.

Mr. Rieder serves as Chairman of the Board of North Star Academy's eleven Charter Schools in Newark, New Jersey and is the Founder and Chairman of the Board of Graduation Generation Public School Collaboration in Atlanta. He is a Trustee for the US Olympic Committee, and is on the International Advisory Council and Board of Advisors for the Hospital for Special Surgery. He serves on the National Leadership Council of the Communities in Schools Educational Foundation and on the board of Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Newark and Essex County   Mr. Rieder was honored at the Choose Success Awards ceremony in Atlanta in 2015 for his dedication to public education in Atlanta through CIS and Graduation Generation.