Jon Hartley

Research Fellow, Financial Services
The typical MBA focuses solely on landing a job on Wall Street or Sand Hill Road. Not Jon Hartley.
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The typical MBA focuses solely on landing a job on Wall Street or Sand Hill Road. Not Jon Hartley.

“I’m passionate about public policy,” Jon says. “I think people underestimate how important banking regulations and monetary policy are to their lives. From access to credit, to insurance, to housing, to jobs: finance is essential to social mobility.”

Jon’s interest in economic policy began at the University of Chicago, where he double-majored in Mathematics and Economics. From 2009 to 2010, Jon worked as a research assistant at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. “How the Fed responded to the Great Recession had a profound effect on my thinking,” says Jon. “The Fed’s de facto ability to regulate banks, to set interest rates, and to act as a lender of last resort are remarkably powerful tools for aiding those affected by recessions.”

Fun fact: Jon Hartley made a cameo appearance in Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-nominated 2013 film “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

From 2011 to 2019, Jon worked at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, taking a couple of years in between to get his MBA at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He recently completed a second Master’s degree, in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Jon has also done stints as a consultant for the Dallas Cowboys, the New York Fed, the World Bank, and the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee, where he worked under FREOPP advisor Scott Winship, focusing on regulations that increase the cost of living. “I got to see how many different policy areas, including monetary policy, taxes, and zoning affect poverty,” he says.

At FREOPP, Jon is a Research Fellow, where his work focuses on how to expand access to credit, banking services, and job opportunities for those on the bottom half of the economic ladder. “I’m honored to join FREOPP because of its great track record in bringing together people on both sides of the aisle to expand economic opportunity.”

Jon lives in Palo Alto, California, where he is working on his Ph.D. in Economics at Stanford.