Sheila Bair steps down as chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) on July 8 when her 5-year term expires. She was appointed by former President George W. Bush and presided over the FDIC as its 19th Chairman during the 2008 financial crisis. At the National Press Club, she discussed her time as chairman and the enactment of the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory law, which granted the FDIC more authority to regulate large, systemically-important financial institutions (SIFIs).
Before joining the FDIC in 2006, she was a Financial Regulatory Policy Professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. She also served as Assistant Treasury Secretary for Financial Institutions (2001-02), Senior Vice President for Government Relations of the New York Stock Exchange (1995-2000) and a Commissioner and Acting Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (1991-95).