Marianne Wanamaker is the dean of the University of Tennessee’s Howard H. Baker Jr. School of Public Policy and Public Affairs and a professor of economics and public policy. She is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a research fellow at the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) and at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. Dr. Wanamaker is the former chief domestic economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisors, where she also served as the senior labor economist. She is a former member of the Federal Workforce Policy Advisory Board and a former associate consultant for Bain & Company in Boston, Massachusetts.

Dr. Wanamaker’s expertise is in labor economics, education, and workforce development. Her work has been widely referenced in the popular press, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post and supported by multiple federal agencies, including the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. In addition to her research record, Dr. Wanamaker has been the recipient of several college and university-level teaching awards, including UT’s Alexander Prize in 2019. In 2017, she was named to Poets and Quants Top 40 Undergraduate Professors.

She serves on the board of Zoo Knoxville and at ThinkWhy, a Dallas-based labor market data startup. She is a director of 3 Roots Capital, a certified CDFI, and is an economic advisor to the Economic Innovation Group, a Washington, DC think tank.

Dr. Wanamaker is a 2001 summa cum laude graduate of Vanderbilt University, where she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She completed her masters degree and PhD at Northwestern University in 2009 and has been on faculty at the University of Tennessee ever since. She is a native of Martin, Tennessee.