Ripple Labs has named former US Department of the Treasury official Michael S. Barr as advisor.
Barr joins several other former high ranking US officials in advising Ripple, including Gene Sperling, Anja Manuel and Donald Donahue.
Barr is also a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and at the Brookings Institution, Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, Professor of Public Policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, and Faculty Director of the Center on Finance, Law and Policy.
He also serves on several advisory boards, including Lending Club, ideas42, Financial Solutions Lab, the FDIC Committee on Economic Inclusion, the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, and the U.S. Financial Diaries Project.
Barr is a strong advocate of employing FinTech to make financial systems more efficient and accessible to all. On joining Ripple's advisory board, he commented, "Our global Payments system is badly outdated. I think innovation in payments can help make the financial system safer, reduce cost, and improve access and efficiency for consumers and businesses alike."
Ripple Labs' CEO and co-founder Chris Larsen said that Barr "has spent his entire career in pursuit of a more equitable and efficient financial system – within government, as an academic, and with many of today’s leading financial innovators. We will lean on his insights and expertise as we continue to build Ripple into a critical piece of the world’s financial technology infrastructure."
