Carmen M. Reinhart is the Minos A. Zombanakis Professor of the International Financial System at Harvard Kennedy School. Previously, she was the Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for International Economics at the University of Maryland. Professor Reinhart held positions as Chief Economist and Vice President at the investment bank Bear Stearns in the 1980s. She spent several years at the International Monetary Fund. Reinhart is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a member of the Congressional Budget Office Panel of Economic Advisers and Council on Foreign Relations. She has served on numerous editorial boards, has testified before congress, and was listed among Bloomberg Markets Most Influential 50 in Finance, 2011. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University.

Reinhart has written on a variety of topics in macroeconomics and international finance and trade and her papers have been published in leading scholarly journals. Her work has helped to inform the understanding of financial crises for over a decade. Her best-selling book (with Kenneth S. Rogoff) entitled This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly (Princeton Press) documents the striking similarities of the recurring booms and busts that have characterized financial history and has been translated to 20 languages and won the 2010 Paul A. Samuelson TIAA-CREF Institute Award, among others.