Yvonne Burke Named to Head L.A. Branch Board of the Fed

Southern California attorney and former U.S. Rep. Yvonne Brathwaite Burke has been designated chairwoman of the Los Angeles Branch Board of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, effective Jan. 1.

She succeeds Richard C. Seaver, chairman of Hydril Co. of Los Angeles, who has served as branch chairman since 1985. He will continue on the board through 1990.

A partner at the Los Angeles Law firm Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue, Burke was appointed to a three-year directorship in 1987 by the central bank’s board of governors in Washington. She was designated chairwoman by the bank’s home office board in San Francisco. Her term runs for one year.

The Los Angeles branch of the Federal Reserve serves more than 4,000 depository institutions in Southern California, Arizona and southern Nevada.

Director responsibilities include overseeing Reserve Bank operations in the region, giving advice on the general direction of monetary policy and providing information on economic developments in the area.

Burke, 55, also is a member of the Board of Regents of the University of California, a director of the Los Angeles Urban League, a trustee of the Ford Foundation, Educational Testing Service and the Amateur Athletic Foundation (formerly the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee) and is a member of the Ford Foundation’s Commission for Anticipating Alternative Futures: Mexico, the United States and U.S.-Mexican Relations.

Burke served three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and chaired the Congressional Black Caucus. She served as a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in 1979-80.