John Dearie

John Dearie is the founder and president of the Center for American Entrepreneurship (CAE), a nonpartisan Washington, DC-based 501(c)(3) research, policy, and advocacy organization.

CAE’s mission is to engage policymakers in Washington and across the nation regarding the critical importance of entrepreneurs and startups to innovation, economic growth, job creation, and expanding opportunity – and to pursue a comprehensive policy agenda intended to achieve a stronger, more resilient, and inclusive U.S. economy through thriving entrepreneurship.

John is the former Acting CEO of the Financial Services Forum, a financial and economic policy organization comprised of the chief executive officers of the 20 largest financial institutions in the United States. From 2001 to 2015, he was the Forum’s Executive Vice President for Policy, coordinating the group’s policy agenda, which included: financial supervision reform, the competitiveness of U.S. capital markets, free and fair trade, comprehensive tax reform, debt and deficit reduction, and accelerating economic growth and job creation.

Prior to joining the Forum, John spent nine years at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York where he held positions in the Banking Studies, Foreign Exchange, and Policy and Analysis areas. He was appointed an Officer of the Bank in 1996.

He is the co-author of “Where the Jobs Are: Entrepreneurship and the Soul of the American Economy” (Wiley, 2013), which was called “one of the great economics books of the past few years” by the American Enterprise Institute. His writing has also appeared in the The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Hill, Politico, American Banker, USA Today, and The Washington Post.

He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, where he double-majored in economics and government, and completed master’s studies at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.