October 16, 2000

The chairman and CEO of the Fannie Mae Corp., the dominant force in the nation's housing finance industry, will deliver an address at UConn on Oct. 25. Franklin Raines, the first African American to head a Fortune 500 Company, will give a lecture titled "Bending the Financial System to Create Homeowners."

"Franklin Raines brings an impressive background and experience to his leadership of the Fannie Mae Corporation and is a most appropriate speaker for the Greenwich Capital Markets Lecture," says Thomas Wilsted, director of the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center. "We look forward to Mr. Raines addressing the issue of providing housing to different economic and social groups within the United States."

The lecture, which begins at 4 p.m., will be held in the Konover Auditorium of the Dodd Center.

Raines, 49, previously served as director of the Office of Management and Budget at the White House, and before that, as vice chairman of Fannie Mae. Raines also worked at a New York investment bank and served as an assistant director of the White House Domestic Policy Staff under Jimmy Carter. He began his career working at a small, private law firm in Seattle.

Raines, who comes from a working class background, excelled in both academics and athletics. He was a valued member of both the football team and the debate team at his high school in Seattle. He graduated from Harvard University and Harvard Law School and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University.

Raines' talk is the third in a lecture series endowed by Greenwich Capital Markets Inc., a finance and investment banking firm with headquarters in Greenwich. The series brings a prominent figure to UConn each year to lecture on a topic related to internationa l commerce. Previous speakers have been Alan Greenspan and Lawrence H. Summers, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury. The lecture is also sponsored by the Dodd Center.

Rebecca Stygar