Michael Piwowar

In May 2013, President Barack Obama nominated Michael Piwowar to serve as a Commissioner on the Securities and Exchange Commission replacing Troy Paredes. He started at the agency in August 2013 and his term lasts until 2018.

In 2014 Piwowar said that at the time he was one of only three Ph.D. economists to have served as an SEC commissioner, a rarity for a position dominated by lawyers. After graduating with a Ph.D. from Penn State University, Piwowar taught at Iowa State University. In 2008–2009, Piwowar served in the president's Council of Economic Advisers. Then he moved to the Senate, where he was a staffer for Republican senators Mike Crapo and Richard Shelby. Like his Democratic colleague at the SEC Kara Stein, who was also a Senate staffer, Piwowar helped write the 2010 Dodd–Frank Act.

During his time at the SEC, Piwowar has joined with his colleague and senior Republican Daniel Gallagher in dissenting to some of the agency's rules and enforcement actions. Piwowar has asked to observe meetings of Washington's super-regulator, the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), and criticized it as "unaccountable capital markets death panel" that lacks transparency.