New board member
Harry Melander, President of the Minnesota Building and Construction Trades Council, was appointed as a new Class C member and will serve a three-year term. Melander has 25 years of experience representing unions in the construction industry and currently serves as the first vice chair of the Metropolitan Council. Melander’s civic participation spans nearly 30 years and multiple organizations in the Ninth District, including the St. Paul District Energy Board and Twin City Housing Development Corporation.
The Class C group of directors is appointed by the Board of Governors to represent the public and also includes MayKao Y. Hang, who was named the 2016 chair of the board of directors, and Kendall J. Powell, who was named 2016 deputy chair.
Board chair and deputy chair
MayKao Y. Hang, president and chief executive officer of the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation in St. Paul, was designated chair of the board of directors for 2016. Hang has been a board member since 2012 and currently serves as the board’s deputy chair. She also co-chaired the Presidential Search Committee in 2015.
Retiring from the Minneapolis Fed’s board is 2015 Board Chair Randall Hogan, chairman and chief executive officer of Pentair, Inc.
Kendall J. Powell, chairman and chief executive officer of General Mills, Inc. in Minneapolis, was designated deputy chair of the board of directors for 2016. Powell joined the board in 2014 as a Class C director and succeeds 2015 Deputy Board Chair MayKao Y. Hang.
Background about the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis
Minneapolis Fed directors are selected to represent a cross section of the Ninth District economy, including consumers, industry, agriculture, the service sector, labor and commercial banks of various sizes. The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Board has nine members, with three Class A directors representing the member banks; Class B and C directors are selected to represent the public with “due but not exclusive consideration to the interests of agriculture, commerce, industry, services, labor, and consumers,” according to the Federal Reserve Act. The class A and B directors are elected by member banks, and the class C directors are appointed by the Board of Governors, which also designates the board's chair and deputy chair from among its three appointees.
The responsibilities of directors are broad, ranging from overseeing the general operations of the Minneapolis Fed to reporting on district economic conditions. This information helps prepare the Minneapolis Fed president for participation in Federal Open Market Committee meetings, where decisions are made about monetary policy.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis is one of 12 regional Reserve Banks that, with the Board of Governors in Washington, D.C., make up the Federal Reserve System, the nation’s central bank. The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis is responsible for the Ninth Federal Reserve District, which includes Montana, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, northwestern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis participates in setting national monetary policy, supervises numerous banking organizations, and provides a variety of payments services to financial institutions and the U.S. government.