Ida Rademacher is a vice president at the Aspen Institute and co-executive director of the Aspen Financial Security Program. She also launched and leads the Aspen Partnership for an Inclusive Economy. A leading voice on Americans’ financial health, Ida is also known for building innovative teams, initiatives and events that fuel new insights and fresh thinking about how to simultaneously build economic inclusion and economic growth. Her efforts have resulted in the creation of several cutting-edge initiatives and events, including the Expanding Prosperity Impact Collaborative (EPIC), the Aspen Leadership Forum on Retirement Savings, Benefits21, the Global Inclusive Growth Summit and The Future of Wealth. She is the co-editor of the recently published book The Future of Building Wealth: Brief Essays on the Best Ideas to Build Wealth – for Everyone.
In her prior role as Chief Program Officer at Prosperity Now (formerly CFED), Ida created the multi-institutional team responsible for leading the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Consumer Financial Well-Being Metrics Project, a foundational research project designed to inform a national definition and measurement framework for financial wellbeing. She also led the creation of Upside Down, a series of reports examining ways the U.S. income tax code generates disparate wealth building opportunities and contributes to growing levels of wealth inequality.
Ida has testified on numerous occasions before Congress and contributes regularly to news and commentary on economic policy and consumer finance topics in outlets including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Politico and public radio’s Marketplace.
A resident of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley and an avid horseback rider, Ida is the first generation in her family to attend college. She pursued postgraduate studies in economic anthropology at the University of Melbourne, Australia; holds a Master of Public Policy degree from the University of Maryland; and a Bachelor of Science degree in anthropology and economics from James Madison University.