Diane Swonk

Chief Economist, KPMG

Diane Swonk began her career with money-center bank First Chicago. She climbed from entry-level to Director of Research and Chief Economist at Bank One, the merged bank. She spent more than a decade as Senior Managing Director and Chief Economist at the financial services firm, Mesirow Financial. Before joining KPMG, Diane had her own economics consulting firm and worked at Grant Thornton. Diane now heads up the growing economics team at KPMG to serve partners and clients, and to engage with the media to help showcase the firm’s achievements.

She has served as an advisor to the National Economic Council (NEC) on a nonpartisan basis. She regularly briefs the regional Federal Reserve banks and the Board of Governors in Washington, DC. She has provided Congressional testimony on income inequality and how to preserve and bolster the quality of government economic statistics.

She was recently named by Barron’s as one of the 100 Most Influential Women in U.S. Finance for 2026. In addition, she has been honored by her peers as Fellow of the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) for outstanding contributions to the field. She serves on the NABE statistics committee to advocate for better information on the economy. Diane serves on the board of the Posse Foundation in Chicago, an organization dedicated to increasing access to higher education. She is active in supporting scholarships and programs to diversify the ranks of economists with more women and underrepresented minorities with her alumni groups and work on the NABE Foundation. She is a member of many business groups, including the Economic Advisory Board of the US Chamber of Commerce, the Council on Foreign Relations, The Economic Club of Chicago and the Chicago Network, the oldest networking group for women executives in the country.