The Fed website now lists Kevin Warsh as chairman, reversing a 12-year trend of his predecessors using chair. No law governs the title, making it a personal call.
The Federal Reserve website now lists Kevin Warsh as "chairman," not "chair." That reverses 12 years of precedent, during which both Janet Yellen and Jerome Powell chose the shorter title.
No law or regulation governs the choice. The Federal Reserve Act itself uses "chairman" for the Board of Governors and "vice chairman." It even names a "vice chairman of supervision," a position created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act. Before Yellen, every Fed leader was called "chairman."
The shift is personal, not procedural. In 2021, under then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the House adopted gender-neutral language for its official proceedings, changing "chairman" to "chair" and "seamen" to "seafarers." The current House kept that rule. On individual committee websites, which are not governed by the House rules, "chairman" is used almost exclusively. The Senate does the same. So Chairman Warsh will testify before Chairman Tim Scott in the Senate and Chairman French Hill in the House during his semi-annual testimony.
Corporate America has moved unevenly. A 2024 Bloomberg analysis found 185 S&P 500 companies used gender-neutral language, triple the count from four years earlier. The biggest banks – JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley – still use "chairmen." At Citigroup, Jane Fraser is "chair," but so was her predecessor, John C. Dugan.
Alicia Syrett, founder of Chairs & Leads, a network of chairs and directors, said the change is not worth reading into. "I think it's his personal decision to choose between 'chair' or 'chairman' based on his preference," she said, "just as much as a female in the role could decide to use 'chairwoman' instead of 'chair' based on her preference."
Warsh's choice aligns with the Fed's own statutory language and with the convention that governed the role for most of its history. It also sidesteps the gender-neutral trend that has reshaped corporate boardrooms and House proceedings. For a central banker who has spent years in Washington and Wall Street, the title signals a return to form.
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