Biography

Susan L. Baker is a strategic policy leader with more than 25 years of experience working at the intersection of domestic and international financial stability, banking resolution, and financial regulation.  She joined the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in January 2018 as the Deputy Director of the Office of Complex Financial Institutions (OCFI) responsible for international planning and outreach. She provided strategic leadership to OCFI’s cross-border engagement and represented the FDIC in a range of international endeavors from firm-specific crisis management groups, to bilateral policy dialogues with the European Union and United Kingdom, to multilateral policy discussions in the Financial Stability Board (FSB) Resolution Steering Group. In 2020, she was became a senior advisor in the Systemic Risk Branch of the newly-established Division of Complex Institution Supervision and Resolution, where she worked on a range of interagency and international policy and strategy issues, and coordinated the FDIC’s participation in the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) as a member of the FSOC Deputies Committee.

Previously, Susan worked at the U.S. Treasury Department, including serving four years as the Director of the Office of International Banking and Securities Markets, leading the team covering international aspects of U.S. regulatory reform, multilateral financial regulatory issues, and various bilateral regulatory dialogues. Susan represented Treasury in a number of international venues, including the FSB committees covering financial sector vulnerabilities, resolution policy, and standards implementation. Susan was the overall U.S. coordinator for the IMF’s 2015 Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP). She also represented Treasury as Attaché for Europe (based in Brussels) and Southeast Asia (based in Singapore), and worked on various policy issues including: bank capital; derivatives and central clearing; and corporate governance.

Susan’s interest in banking crises and resolution stems from her five years in Indonesia working as a sell-side banks analyst and policy advisor during the Asian Financial Crisis. She also spent five years on the buy side, helping manage a $1.4-1.6 billion growth-oriented international equities portfolio.

Susan has a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard and a bachelor’s degree in foreign service from Georgetown University.