Faculty
Gary Gensler is Professor of the Practice of Global Economics and Management as well as of Finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He conducts research and teaches on artificial intelligence, finance, financial technology, and public policy.
Gensler most recently served as the 33rd Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission during the Biden Administration. He led the agency through a robust reform agenda to enhance efficiency, resiliency, and integrity in the $120 trillion U.S. capital markets.
Previously, Gensler served as Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the Obama Administration, leading reform of the $400 trillion swaps market. He also served as Under Secretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance, and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during the Clinton Administration as well as Senior Advisor to Senator Paul Sarbanes in writing the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002). He also was Chairman of the Maryland Financial Consumer Protection Commission (2017-2019).
Gensler co-hosts (with Simon Johnson) the 'Power and Consequences' podcast. He co-edited ‘The Economic Consequences of the Second Trump Administration’ (CEPR Press, 2025) and authored a book on investing for everyday Americans, The Great Mutual Fund Trap, (Broadway Books, 2002).
Prior to his public service, Gensler worked at Goldman Sachs, where he became partner in the Mergers & Acquisition department, headed the firm’s Media Group, led fixed income & currency trading in Asia, and lastly co-headed Finance, being responsible for the firm's worldwide Controllers and Treasury functions.
He is a recipient of the 2014 Tamar Frankel Fiduciary Prize and the US Treasury’s highest honor, the Alexander Hamilton Award. Based on student nominations, he won the MIT Sloan 2019 Outstanding Teacher Award.
Gensler earned his undergraduate degree in economics and his MBA from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
He has three daughters, and is from Baltimore, Maryland.
Gensler, Gary and Lily Bailey, MIT Sloan Working Paper 6223-20. Cambridge, MA: MIT Sloan School of Management, November 2020. SSRN Link.
Here are six titles connected to the MIT Sloan School of Management covering topics such as economic strategy, entrepreneurship, talent management, and cultural evolution in the age of AI.
MIT Sloan’s Gary Gensler and Peter R. Fisher advise investors to develop an AI investment thesis and avoid overconfident investing during policy pivots.
The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, which professor of the practice Gary Gensler helped implement after the global financial crisis, simply does not pertain to sports bets, he said. "Since antiquity, people have wanted to bet on sports and other things. So on some level, I understand the economic interest of the people setting up the platforms to fill that demand and compete with the casinos, FanDuels, and DraftKings of the world. But I do think that there's a misrepresentation of what we were doing in 2010," Gensler said.
Professor of the practice Gary Gensler joined CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" to discuss his take on President Donald Trump's call for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to have exclusive authority over prediction markets.
Professor of the practice Gary Gensler joined "Bloomberg This Weekend" to discuss the SEC's move to end the quarterly reporting requirement. "Economic study after economic study has shown that quarterly reporting is a good thing. It creates a market environment where you can get a little higher price earnings ratio and a little less cost of capital because your investor base knows what's going on," Gensler said. (1:09:34)
Professor of the practice Gary Gensler, a former chair of both the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), said prediction markets have gone beyond what the law intended. "I never once heard a member of Congress or their staffs suggest that the law they were writing, acting upon, and voting on was for our little agency, the CFTC, to have oversight over sports betting," he said.
