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Nela Richardson

US Monetary Policy Forum Panelist Nela Richardson

Dr. Nela Richardson is chief economist and ESG offcer for ADP Inc. She also leads the independent team at ADP Research, which provides reliable and timely data-driven discovery for use by the public, business leaders, and policymakers.

In 2021, Richardson led a revamp of the ADP National Employment Report in collaboration with Stanford Digital Economy Lab and launched Pay Insights, a report that tracks wage growth based on the payroll data of almost 10 million individual workers.

In addition to ongoing labor market analysis, Richardson provides insights on the dynamic shifts of the economy. She is a highly sought speaker and has delivered remarks at global thought leadership events such as the World Economic Forum Annual Conference in Davos, Switzerland, and the Federal Reserve’s Jackson Hole Economic Symposium.

Richardson is a contributor to Bloomberg and Marketplace from American Public Media. She frequently appears on CNBC, Fox Business, CNN, Yahoo! Finance, and in The Wall Street Journal, FORTUNE magazine, and The New York Times. Her weekly column, Main Street Macro, examines economic conditions and their effect on small and large businesses, workers, and households.

Prior to joining ADP, Richardson was a principal and investment strategist at Edward Jones, where she analyzed and interpreted economic trends and financial market conditions and recommended investment strategies. She previously served as chief economist at Redfin Corp., a national real estate brokerage and technology company, where she led a team of data scientists, economists, and writers who tracked trends in the housing market. At Bloomberg, L.P., she was a senior economist covering housing and financial markets.

Richardson has held research positions at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, and Freddie Mac. She held an adjunct finance professorship at the Carey School of Business at John Hopkins University.

She was awarded a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Maryland, College Park, with concentrations in financial economics, international finance, and economic development. She earned her master’s degree in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor’s degree from Indiana University in Bloomington with a triple major in mathematics, economics, and philosophy.