[1/3] Fed Governor Philip Jefferson testifies before a Senate Banking Committee hearing on his nomination to be the Federal Reserve's next vice chair, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 21, 2023. Senators also confirmed Fed Governor Lisa Cook to a fresh 14-year term at the central bank, though they did so in a 51-47 vote that broke along partisan lines. Both Jefferson and Cook have a PhD in economics and became Fed governors in May of 2022 after long careers in academia. The U.S. central bank's vice chair, whose term is four years, also traditionally serves as the Fed chief's go-to official on policy communications, underscoring key messages and clarifying potential misinterpretations. The confirmations of Jefferson, Cook and Kugler would make the board the most diverse in the central bank's more-than-100-year history.

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Persons: Philip Jefferson, Jonathan Ernst, Lisa Cook, Cook, Jerome Powell, Powell, John Williams, Adriana Kugler, Jefferson, Kugler, Ann Saphir, Chizu Nomiyama, Andrea Ricci, Paul Simao Organizations: Federal, Capitol, REUTERS, U.S, Senate, Federal Reserve, Senators, Jefferson, New York Fed, World Bank, Fed, Latina, Thomson Locations: Washington , U.S, U.S