Rosa Gumataotao Rios, Maryland Women's Hall of Fame

Rosa Gumataotao Rios

Rosa "Rosie" Gumataotao Rios was the 43rd Treasurer of the United States and is most recently known for leading the efforts to place a portrait of a woman on the front of U.S. currency for the first time in over a century. Upon her resignation in 2016, she received the Hamilton Award, the highest honor bestowed in the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Rosie was the longest serving Senate-confirmed Treasury official beginning with her time on the Treasury/Federal Reserve Transition Team in November 2008 at the height of the financial crisis. She is the CEO of Red River Associates, a real estate consulting firm and has recently completed her term as a Visiting Scholar at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.
In her role as Treasurer of the United States, Rosie was the CEO of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the U.S. Mint, including Fort Knox. Her day-to-day responsibilities included overseeing all currency and coin production activities with almost 4,000 employees in eight facilities nationwide and an annual budget of approximately $5 billion. In the first five years of her tenure, she saved over $1 billion by implementing efficiencies and innovative concepts while meeting increased production demand and increasing employee morale at record levels. Her signature currently appears on a world-record $1.5 trillion out of the $1.6 trillion in circulation worldwide.
Rosie's entire career has focused on real estate finance, economic development and urban revitalization in both the public and private sectors. Prior to her presidential appointment in Treasury, Rosie was Managing Director of Investments for MacFarlane Partners, a $22 billion real estate investment management firm based in San Francisco. Other real estate/urban revitalization activities include the Director of Economic Development and/or Redevelopment for multiple cities such as Oakland, Fremont, San Leandro and Union City.
Rosie is a graduate of Harvard University and was selected as the first Latina in Harvard's 382-year history to have a portrait commissioned in her honor. She currently serves on the board of Fidelity Charitable Trust and the Schlesinger Council at Harvard. In 2018, she was appointed as a member of America 250, a Congressional Commission to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the nation's founding in 2026 and serves on the Executive Committee. Her personal passion includes EMPOWERMENT 2020, an initiative that facilitates the physical recognition of historical American women. Its first project, Teachers Righting History, recognizes historical American women in classrooms across the country. She is now launching Notable Women, an Augmented Reality educational initiative in collaboration with Google. She remains active in real estate finance and is consulting on several transformational projects in the Bay Area under her "RESCUE" initiative: Real Estate for Socially Conscious Urban Empowerment.
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Biography courtesy of the Maryland Commission for Women, 2019.