Phillip Swagel is a professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, where he teaches classes on international economics and is an academic fellow at the Center for Financial Policy at the university's Robert H. Smith School of Business. Swagel was assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department from December 2006 to January 2009. In that position, he served as a member of the TARP investment committee and advised Secretary Henry Paulson on all aspects of economic policy. He previously worked at the American Enterprise Institute, the White House Council of Economic Advisers, the International Monetary Fund, and the Federal Reserve, and taught economics at Northwestern University, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University. He received a bachelor's degree in economics from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.