Karen Petrou

Karen Petrou is the co-founder and Managing Partner of Federal Financial Analytics, Inc., a privately held company that since 1985 has provided analytical and advisory services on legislative, regulatory, and public-policy issues affecting financial services companies doing business in the U.S. and abroad.

Petrou is a frequent speaker on topics affecting the financial services industry. In addition to testifying before the U.S. Congress, she has spoken before the Federal Reserve Banks of New York, St. Louis, San Francisco, and Chicago; the European Central Bank; the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency; the International Monetary Fund; the Clearing House; the Bank Policy Institute; the Institute of International Bankers; the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association; the Japanese Diet; and many other governmental, industry, and academic groups.

Petrou is the author of Engine of Inequality: The Fed and the Future of Wealth in America. She has also authored numerous articles in publications such as the American Banker and the Financial Times, and she is frequently quoted as a bank policy expert in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Politico, the Hill, and other media outlets.

Prior to founding her own firm in 1985, Petrou worked in Washington as an officer at Bank of America, where she began her career in 1977. She is an honors graduate in Political Science from Wellesley College and also was a special student in an honors program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She earned an M.A. in that subject from the University of California at Berkeley and was a doctoral candidate there.

She has served on the Boards of banking organizations and now sits as a Director on the Board of the Fidelco Guide Dog Foundation, and she is the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Foundation Fighting Blindness. In 2019, she and her late husband Basil were named “visionaries” by the Foundation Fighting Blindness and received the Berman award in 2022. These reflect the Petrous’ work not only for vision research, but also development of a new financial instrument that would provide billions for biomedical research in all diseases, disabilities, and disorders.