Gene Sperling is Senior Fellow for economic policy at the Center for American Progress. He also serves as Director of the Center for Universal Education at the Council on Foreign Relations, focusing on policies to increase children's access to basic education in the world's poorest countries. Previously, Mr. Sperling served as National Economic Advisor to President Clinton from 1997-2001.

Mr. Sperling is a contributing editor and columnist for Bloomberg News, a Governor of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, and is a consultant and contributing writer for the television show, The West Wing.

Mr. Sperling directs the Global Campaign for Education in the United States, is a member of the UN Millennium Project Task Force on Education and Gender Equality.

As National Economic Advisor and Director of the National Economic Council he was responsible for coordinating the economic cabinet members in making policy recommendations to the President. Mr. Sperling coordinated President Clinton's policy efforts on deficit reduction, Saving Social Security First, USA Accounts, and globalization workforce and trade issues. Mr. Sperling was the third Director of the National Economic Council, following Robert Rubin (1993-1994) and Laura Tyson (1995-1996). In President Clinton's first term, he served as Deputy National Economic Advisor.

He played a lead role in the creation and passage of many of President Clinton's key economic initiatives including the 1993 Deficit Reduction Act/Earned Income Tax Credit Expansion; the Hope Scholarship Tax Credit, Direct Student Loans; the Digital Divide Initiatives; the Workforce Improvement Act of 1998; the legislation instituting debt relief for highly-indebted poor nations; the New Markets legislation and the GEAR-UP college readiness program. He was a principal negotiator for the 1997 Balanced Budget Agreement and with United States Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky, successfully concluded the historic China-WTO agreement in Beijing.

Mr. Sperling graduated from the University of Minnesota and Yale Law School, and attended Wharton Business School. At Yale Law School he was Senior Editor of the Yale Law Journal. He is a native of Ann Arbor, Michigan, where his parents still live.