US President Joe Biden on Friday announced the appointment of C Kirabo Jackson as a member of his Council of Economic Advisers.

Jackson, whose father, Clement, was the first director of the Planning Institute of Jamaica, spent part of his childhood in Jamaica, where he attended Hillel Prep. His mother June Jackson, a native of Trinidad & Tobago, was a lecturer at the University of Technology.

According to a release issued by The White House, Jackson is the Abraham Harris Professor of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. He is also a Professor of Economics, a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research, and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Currently, Jackson serves as the Editor-In-Chief of the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy. He was previously Co-Editor for the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy and the Journal of Human Resources, according to the release.

Jackson earned his Bachelor’s in Ethics, Politics, and Economics from Yale University, and obtained his PhD in Economics from Harvard University.

According to The White House, Jackson’s research interests include labor economics, public finance, and applied econometrics, with a focus on the economics of education. His research has explored the role of teachers in the K-12 system, the causal impact of public-school spending on students, methods to measure impacts on students’ socio-emotional skills, and other education-related subjects.

In 2020, Jackson was elected to the National Academy of Education and received the David N Kershaw Award from the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management in recognition of his contributions to the field of public policy analysis and management. In 2022, Jackson was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an honor that celebrates excellence and leadership across various disciplines and practices, The White House said in the release.

The Council of Economic Advisers is an agency within the Executive Office of the US president. It is charged with offering the president objective economic advice on the formulation of both domestic and international policy, according to The White House’s website.