Steve Edwards

About

Steve Edwards is the Bank's executive vice president for external affairs and civic engagement.

Joining the Chicago Fed in 2024, Edwards brings wide-ranging experience at civic-minded organizations to this newly created role, which focuses on the many ways the bank engages with the Chicago Fed's Seventh District and the broader public. In addition to leading civic engagement, community development, and public affairs for the Bank, he serves as a member of its Executive Committee.

Edwards came to the Bank from Koya Partners, where he worked with a variety of mission-driven organizations across the media, civic and public policy sectors as a managing director of the firm’s executive search and Connected Leadership practices.

For much of his career, Edwards was an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared on Bloomberg News, BBC, and on numerous public radio stations across the nation. He served as chief content officer and interim chief executive of Chicago Public Media, which is home to Chicago’s NPR member station WBEZ and is one of the largest public media institutions in the nation. Previously, Edwards led WBEZ’s digital team as director of content development and served as host of two acclaimed radio programs, Eight-Forty-Eight and The Afternoon Shift.

From 2012 to 2017, Edwards helped launch and lead the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics, a non-partisan institute focused on expanding and elevating the public conversation and cultivating the next generation of public service leaders.

Earlier in his career, Edwards also served as a producer for Bloomberg Television and as an account executive at the Leo Burnett Company.

He is a member the Economic Club of Chicago and serves on the teaching faculty of the University of Chicago’s Civic Leadership Academy and the Executive Club of Chicago’s LEAD program.

Edwards is a graduate of Amherst College and was a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan.