W. Bowman Cutter Selected to Chair RFF Board of Directors

W. Bowman Cutter Selected to Chair RFF Board of Directors

For Immediate Release: February 22, 2010
Contact: RFF Office of Communications, 202-328-5026

WASHINGTON – W. Bowman (Bo) Cutter, a key economic adviser to two presidents and a leader in international development issues, has been elected chair of the Resources for the Future Board of Directors. He will succeed Larry Linden, who has chaired the Board since 2006.

Cutter, who has been an RFF Director since 2002, was approved unanimously by the RFF Board in February. He will begin his term as chair in October. Steven W. Percy will remain in his current post as vice-chair.

“My admiration for the legacy and the ongoing work of Resources for the Future makes me particularly gratified to be chosen to lead such a policy-relevant and vital institution,” Cutter said. “RFF provides the rigorous and solid analysis that our current policy challenges demand.”

RFF President Phil Sharp noted that Cutter’s tenure will extend work instigated by Linden, who oversaw an extensive strategic review of RFF’s research mission and operations over the past five years. “Bo Cutter’s long association with RFF and his close involvement with our ongoing strategic transition will give us the experienced leadership that we will need as we continue to refocus RFF’s goals and potential impact in the years ahead,” Sharp said.

Between 1996 until 2009, Cutter was a managing director of Warburg Pincus, a major global private equity firm headquartered in New York City. He served as both the firm’s chief economist and as a leader of its international business sector, particularly in Asia. In these roles, Cutter evaluated the financial and business conditions of key nations and regions; assessed capital markets; and advised on specific investments within these markets. From 1981-1993, he was vice chairman and managing partner at Coopers & Lybrand, the global accounting and consulting firm that subsequently merged with Price Waterhouse.

In 2009, he became director of the Economic Policy Initiative at the Roosevelt Institute in New York, which was founded in 1987 to inform new generations about the ideals and achievements of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Cutter moved to Warburg Pincus directly from a senior economic policy role in the Administration of President William Clinton – one of two Democratic presidencies he served. He was at the National Economic Council from 1992 to 1996, during the Clinton Presidency – as director of the National Economic Council and Deputy Assistant to the President – and also at the Office of Management and Budget from 1976 to 1981, during the Carter Presidency, as Executive Director for Budget.

He is a board member of the Global Information Infrastructure Commission Steering Committee of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a member of The Atlantic Council and the New York Council on Foreign Relations.

Cutter has long held an active interest in international development strategies. He has worked extensively with the World Bank and is currently the chairman of the board of CARE, the global development organization, where he has been a member of the board for 13 years. He also is a founder and current chairman of MicroVest, a leading global microfinance fund with assets under management now in excess of $100 million.

In addition, Cutter is a member of the Governing Council of the IFMR Trust, in India, focusing upon market based solutions to the problems of severe poverty in India. He is a member of the executive committee and immediate past co-chairman of the Committee for Economic Development and a board member of the Russell Sage Foundation.

Cutter holds degrees from Harvard University, the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

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Founded in 1952, Resources for the Future is a nonprofit and nonpartisan research organization that conducts independent policy analysis – rooted primarily in economics and other social sciences – on energy, environmental, and natural resource issues. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., its research scope comprises programs in nations around the world.

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