Boshara, Pack Join Community Development

Ray Boshara joined the St. Louis Fed as a senior advisor in April 2011. In that capacity, he will work across departments at the Fed, with other regional banks, and with the Board of Governors on a broad range of policy and research issues affecting low-income families and communities throughout the Eighth District and nationwide.

After living in Washington, D.C., for 20 years, Boshara and his family relocated to St. Louis in the fall of 2009 after his wife, Lora Iannotti, accepted a faculty position in international public health at Washington University's new Institute for Public Health.

Prior to joining the Fed, Boshara was vice president of the New America Foundation, where he also founded and directed the Asset Building Program, Next Social Contract Initiative, Global Assets Project and College Savings Initiative. Over the last 15 years, he has advised the Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama administrations, presidential candidates and policymakers worldwide. He has testified before the U.S. Congress and given speeches around the world on ownership strategies for the poor, the U.S. economy and the American social contract. He will continue as a senior fellow at New America.

Boshara has written for The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire and the Brookings Institution, and has published research papers with academics in the asset-building and financial literacy fields. His book, The Next Progressive Era, co-authored with New America Senior Fellow Phillip Longman, was published in April 2009. He currently serves on many advisory boards, including at the Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and the Economic Mobility Project of the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Before joining New America in 2002, Boshara worked for CFED, the Select Committee on Hunger and Rep. Tony P. Hall in the U.S. Congress, the U.N.'s International Fund for Agricultural Development in Rome, and Ernst & Young. He is a graduate of The Ohio State University, Yale Divinity School and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

Andrew "Drew" Pack started his career at the St. Louis Fed in 2009. He worked as a regional public policy specialist in the Public Affairs department before his recent move to the community development team. He is working at the Little Rock Branch as a community development specialist, providing advisory services to local community organizations throughout Arkansas.

Before joining the Fed, Pack worked to promote the economic development efforts of Pensacola, Florida, as an intern at the Pensacola Bay Area Chamber of Commerce during the summers of 2007 and 2008. He also assisted in the establishment of iTenWired (www.itenwired.com), a regional entrepreneurship network, and
a business incubator called Gulf Coast Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (www.gulfcoastinnovation.com), helping business owners along the Gulf Coast. And he worked at Auburn University as a graduate teaching assistant in International Political Economy and the American States Administrators Project (www.auburn.edu/outreach/cgs/ASAP).

Pack is a native of Birmingham, Ala. He holds a bachelor's degree in political science with a concentration in international relations from the University of Mississippi, and a master's in public administration with a minor in economic development from Auburn University. Pack was a member of the Auburn chapter of Pi Alpha Alpha. He looks forward to continuing his work at the Bank and serving organizations and communities in Arkansas.