Larry Summers Net Worth

What is Larry Summers' Net Worth and Salary?

Larry Summers is an American economist who has a net worth of $40 million. In 2009, when he joined the Obama White House as the director of the National Economic Council, Larry estimated his net worth to be between $7 and $31 million. Larry has earned tens of millions of dollars during his lifetime thanks to board appointments, stock grants, speaking fees, and standard income from positions at hedge funds. Larry has served on the board of directors of companies, including LendingClub, Square, and OpenAI. When LendingClub went public in 2014, his stake was worth around $30 million. Unfortunately, over the next 10 years, LendingClub lost around 90% of its market cap. If he still holds his original stake, today his shares are worth around $3 million.

Lawrence H. Summers built one of the most prominent and polarizing careers in modern American economic policy. After studying economics at MIT and Harvard and earning early recognition as an academic prodigy, he became one of the youngest tenured professors in Harvard's history and won the John Bates Clark Medal, marking him as a likely future leader in the field. Rather than remain in academia, he moved into government service, beginning with work under Ronald Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers and later joining the World Bank. His breakthrough came in the Clinton administration, where he worked under Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin during the international financial crises of the 1990s. Their high-profile stewardship earned the duo, along with Alan Greenspan, a TIME magazine cover labeling them "The Committee to Save the World." Summers succeeded Rubin as Treasury Secretary in 1999 and served until the end of the Clinton presidency.

In 2001, he became president of Harvard University, a tenure defined by intellectual combativeness, clashes with faculty, and national controversy over his remarks about women's aptitude in math and science. Mounting pressure led to his resignation in 2006, though Harvard cushioned the departure by awarding him a prestigious University Professorship. He soon reemerged as a prominent Democratic economic voice. He advised Barack Obama during the 2008 financial crisis, served as director of the National Economic Council, and became a sought-after speaker, consultant, and board member.

Over the next decade, he remained a high-visibility commentator on inflation, fiscal policy, markets, and global economics, influencing both Democratic and Republican debates. But his career faced a severe reckoning in 2025 when Congress released years of emails showing sustained personal correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein long after Epstein's criminal conviction. The fallout prompted Summers to resign from multiple boards, including OpenAI, and step back from most public roles, casting a long shadow over a career that blended brilliance, influence, controversy, and self-inflicted wounds.

Early Life and Education

Lawrence Summers was born on November 30, 1954, in New Haven, Connecticut, to Anita and Robert Summers, both of whom were economists and professors at the University of Pennsylvania. Raised in the Philadelphia suburb of Penn Valley, he grew up in an academic household surrounded by economic thinkers; his uncles were Nobel Prize–winning economists Paul Samuelson and Kenneth Arrow. Summers attended Harriton High School before enrolling at MIT at just 16 years old, a reflection of his early academic acceleration. He graduated in 1975 with a degree in economics. Summers then moved on to Harvard University for graduate school, earning his PhD in economics in 1982. His doctoral work and early scholarship quickly marked him as one of the most promising young economists of his generation.

Career Beginnings in Academia

Summers joined the Harvard faculty in 1983, beginning a meteoric academic rise. At just 28, he became one of the youngest professors in Harvard history to receive tenure. His scholarship focused on public finance, labor economics, macroeconomic theory, and taxation, and he quickly gained a reputation for both intellectual firepower and sharp contrarian instincts. During this period, he produced influential papers on unemployment, wage dynamics, and economic policy design, and he began cultivating the national profile that would later draw him into government service. In 1993, the American Economic Association awarded him the John Bates Clark Medal, recognizing him as the most outstanding American economist under age 40.

Chief Economist of the World Bank

In 1991, Summers left Harvard to serve as Chief Economist of the World Bank. In that role, he oversaw research efforts, directed major economic policy studies, and advised developing nations on poverty reduction strategies, fiscal reform, and structural change. He also helped modernize the Bank's internal research programs and training initiatives for foreign ministries and central banks. His tenure attracted controversy when an internal memo he signed discussing the economics of pollution trading was leaked and interpreted as advocating the export of toxic waste to developing countries. The memo was intended as a piece of biting satire about global inequities, but the context was lost in the leak, leading to international criticism. Despite the scandal, Summers remained a central player in shaping the Bank's economic agenda until he left in 1993.

Clinton Administration

After leaving the World Bank in 1993, Summers was appointed Under Secretary for International Affairs in the Clinton administration. He was promoted to Deputy Treasury Secretary in 1995, working alongside Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin during a period defined by global financial turbulence. Summers helped craft the U.S. response to major crises in Mexico, Asia, and Russia and played a central role in guiding the economic transition of post-Soviet states toward market systems. He was also a key contributor to major deregulatory measures of the era, including the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed parts of Glass-Steagall and opened the door for the modern financial-services industry. In 1999, Summers succeeded Rubin as Treasury Secretary, becoming one of the youngest people ever to hold the role. He remained in the position until the end of the Clinton presidency in 2001.

Harvard President

After leaving government, Summers returned to Harvard in 2001 as the university's 27th president. His tenure was marked by both ambition and controversy. Supporters praised him for pressing Harvard toward modernization and increasing attention to scientific research, but his confrontational leadership style alienated faculty members, department heads, and administrators. Summers publicly clashed with Cornel West, then the head of the African-American Studies department, prompting West's departure from Harvard. In 2005, a conference speech in which Summers speculated about potential biological differences in aptitude between men and women in science triggered widespread backlash and accusations of sexism. Questions about his oversight of Harvard's investments and his relationship with economist Andrei Shleifer further inflamed tensions. After a series of contentious faculty meetings and a historic no-confidence vote, Summers resigned in 2006. Two years later, he returned to the faculty as the Charles W. Eliot University Professor, one of Harvard's highest academic honors.

Facebook Controversy

Summers became embroiled in one of his most public non-policy controversies through his connection to the early days of Facebook. As Harvard's president during the period when Mark Zuckerberg launched the platform from his dorm room, Summers played a peripheral but memorable role in the dispute between Zuckerberg and classmates Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, who claimed he had stolen their idea. The twins sought a meeting with Summers in 2004 to press their case and request university intervention. Summers dismissed their complaints, reportedly finding their appeal inappropriate for a university president and advising them to pursue their concerns in court rather than through Harvard's administration.

The interaction took on a second life after it was dramatized in the 2010 film "The Social Network," where Summers was portrayed as brusque and unsympathetic to the students' claims. In a 2011 interview at the Aspen Institute, Larry mocked the Winklevosses as "assholes," stating:

"One of the things you learn as a college president is that if an undergraduate is wearing a tie and jacket on Thursday afternoon at three o'clock, there are two possibilities. One is that they are looking for a job and have an interview. The other is that they are an asshole. This was the latter case."

The remark struck many observers as unprofessional, coming from a former university president speaking about former students. His remarks seemed especially awful when considering the fact that the Winklevoss twins – preppy as they may have been – were probably not wrong about Mark stealing their idea.

Rob Kim / Getty Images

Financial Sector Work

After stepping down as Harvard's president in 2006, Summers transitioned into a lucrative period of private-sector consulting and speaking. He became a part-time managing director at the hedge fund D. E. Shaw & Co., one of the most prestigious quantitative investment firms in the world. His role focused on high-level economic analysis rather than day-to-day trading, but the position still provided substantial annual compensation. Summers also built a significant side business as a speaker and adviser to major financial institutions. Engagements with Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, and numerous industry conferences generated approximately $2.7 million in fees in the year leading up to his return to government service.

During this period he also made several early-stage investments, including an angel investment in Zoomcar, India's first car-sharing and car rental startup. His wide-ranging private-sector work boosted his personal wealth and cemented his reputation as a globally sought-after economic strategist, although these earnings later prompted criticism when he reentered government and took positions with regulatory influence over many of the firms that had previously hired him.

Obama Administration

In 2009, President Barack Obama appointed Summers to lead the National Economic Council, positioning him at the center of the administration's response to the Great Recession. In this role, Summers helped craft the early stimulus strategy, oversaw key financial-sector rescue policies, and advised the president on macroeconomic stabilization measures. He was viewed as one of the administration's most influential economic voices, often shaping policy through his aggressive advocacy for specific fiscal and monetary interventions.

However, his time in the White House was not without controversy. Critics noted that Summers had earned millions in the private sector in the years immediately preceding his appointment, including from banks and financial firms whose post-crisis futures he now had a hand in determining. Supporters argued that his expertise was essential during an unprecedented economic emergency, while detractors raised concerns about conflicts of interest and the revolving door between Wall Street and Washington. Summers remained in the NEC position until late 2010, after which he returned to Harvard full-time.

Board Appointments

Summers joined a number of high-profile corporate boards after leaving the Obama administration. In 2011, he became a director at Square, the mobile payments company founded by Jack Dorsey. The following year, he joined the board of LendingClub, the peer-to-peer lending platform that later generated a massive paper windfall for him at its IPO. Summers also accepted roles on advisory boards and committees across the technology and financial sectors, including a seat on the board of Premise Data, a global analytics and surveillance technology company.

These positions further expanded his influence in the private sector, especially in fintech and emerging data-driven industries. They also contributed to public debate about the financial opportunities available to former policymakers navigating between government roles and lucrative corporate posts.

Jeffrey Epstein Friendship

Summers's long-running relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, which began in the early 2000s, emerged as the defining scandal of his later career. He maintained correspondence and occasional contact with Epstein for years after Epstein's 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor, a decision that drew scrutiny even before the full extent of their communications became public. In 2025, the release of more than 20,000 emails from the Epstein estate exposed numerous exchanges between the two men from 2017 through 2019. The emails included personal conversations, crass banter, discussions about powerful figures, and troubling commentary about women. Some messages involved Summers seeking Epstein's advice on pursuing a romantic relationship with a younger economist he described as a mentee.

The revelations triggered swift backlash. Summers apologized to his students at Harvard, calling the correspondence "shameful," and soon afterward announced he would be stepping back from most public obligations. Over the next several days, he resigned from multiple boards and advisory roles, including the Center for Global Development, the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the Budget Lab at Yale, and the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. OpenAI, where Summers had served on the board since 2023, accepted his resignation as well. Harvard launched an internal review to assess Summers's relationship with Epstein and decide whether further action was warranted. The scandal effectively ended Summers's public-facing career and overshadowed decades of work in academia, government, and finance.

Personal Life

Summers married his first wife, economist Victoria Perry, in 1984. They had three children together: a son, Harry, and twin daughters, Ruth and Pamela. The marriage ended in 2003. In 2005, Summers married literary scholar and professor Elisa New, who has three daughters from a prior marriage: Orli, Yael, and Maya. Summers resides in Brookline, Massachusetts, and has maintained ties to academic life through teaching and research, even as his public visibility has fluctuated over the years.

Real Estate

In 2006, Larry paid $2.53 million for a 6,900-square-foot home in Brookline, Massachusetts. Today, this home is worth around $5 million.

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