Todd M. Harper was nominated by President Donald J. Trump to serve on the NCUA Board on February 6, 2019. The U.S. Senate confirmed him to serve the remainder of a partial term on March 14, 2019, and he was sworn in as a member of the NCUA Board on April 8, 2019. President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., then designated him as the NCUA’s twelfth Chairman on January 20, 2021, and Mr. Harper served in this role until January 20, 2025.
On August 6, 2021, President Biden renominated Mr. Harper for a full term on the NCUA Board. On June 8, 2022, Board Member Harper was confirmed by the Senate for a term expiring on April 10, 2027. His investiture ceremony for that term took place on July 11, 2022.
Credit unions run in the fabric of Mr. Harper’s family. His father, Dr. Ronald Small, started a teachers’ credit union in Illinois in the 1960s. And, his father’s father led the board of a soap factory credit union in Indiana in the 1930s.
As an NCUA Board Member and previous Chairman, Mr. Harper has led the agency in addressing unprecedented challenges, like the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2023 liquidity crisis. His work at the NCUA has also made the credit union system safer and more resilient with the implementation of risk-based capital standards for complex credit unions and increased fairness and protections for credit union members by enhancing the supervision of fair lending laws and problematic overdraft fee programs.
Mr. Harper has additionally advanced equity to ensure the credit union system works better for all Americans, especially those of modest means, with the creation of a customized framework for examining minority depository institutions and convening annual diversity, equity, and inclusion summits between 2021 and 2024. For his efforts to create a more equitable financial system, Mr. Harper was inducted into the African American Credit Union Coalition’s Hall of Fame in February 2023.
Prior to joining the NCUA Board, Mr. Harper served as director of the agency’s Office of Public and Congressional Affairs and chief policy advisor to former Chairmen Debbie Matz and Rick Metsger. He is the first member of the NCUA’s staff to become an NCUA Board Member. He is also the first member of the NCUA staff to have served as NCUA Chairman. And, Mr. Harper is the first member of the LGBTQ+ community to lead a federal financial services regulatory agency.
Mr. Harper previously worked for the U.S. House of Representatives as staff director for the Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance, and Government-Sponsored Enterprises and as legislative director and senior legislative assistant to former Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Pennsylvania). In these roles, he contributed to every major financial services law, from the enactment of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act in 1999 through the passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2010.
During the Great Recession, Mr. Harper coordinated the first congressional hearing to explore the creation of a Temporary Corporate Credit Union Stabilization Fund. He also spearheaded staff efforts in the U.S. House to secure enactment of a law to lower the costs of managing both the Corporate Stabilization Fund and the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund.
Mr. Harper led staff negotiations over several sections of the Dodd-Frank Act, including the Kanjorski amendment to empower regulators to preemptively rein in and break up “too-big-to-fail” institutions and proposals to enhance the powers of the Securities and Exchange Commission. He also developed the legislative framework for the bill that created the Federal Insurance Office to monitor domestic and international insurance issues.
When he served as NCUA Board Chairman, Mr. Harper was also a voting member of the Financial Stability Oversight Council, which was created by the Dodd-Frank Act, and he represented the NCUA on the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, which he chaired between 2021 and 2023.
Mr. Harper holds an undergraduate degree in business analysis from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business and a graduate degree in public policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He has appeared on CNBC broadcasts and testified before Congress more than a dozen times. Mr. Harper resides in Arlington, Virginia, with Tom Beers, his partner of 30-plus years, and their cats, Vonnegut and Bartok.
