Office of the First Vice President

Karen A. Pennell is first vice president and chief operating officer at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. She leads the Bank’s contributions and performance in operational, technological, financial, risk management, workforce, and support areas. She assumed the role in April 2024, as the Bank’s second-ranking officer and vice chair of the Bank's Executive Committee.

Nationally, Pennell collaborates with Federal Reserve System peers on major initiatives. She directs many national financial management activities for the System, leading its Financial Support Office. She also serves as a member of the Fed’s Conference of First Vice Presidents.

Pennell has been with the Federal Reserve since 1989, and has held numerous leadership positions during her career, particularly in financial services customer support, IT support and strategy, and technology transitions—with the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City as well as with national Federal Reserve functions. In her most recent role as executive vice president and chief client services officer for the Fed’s National IT function, she headed client services and focused on technology requirements for lines of business, major project and program delivery, infrastructure, and operations in support of the U.S. Treasury, as well as end user services for System employees.

From 1989 through 2020, Pennell held positions of increasing responsibility at the Kansas City Fed, most recently serving as a senior vice president and member of the Management Committee. She led the Bank’s Information Technology division, including information security, application development, the System’s IT “service desk,” and access management and provisioning functions, and played key roles in the System’s national customer support function for financial services.

From 2013 to 2015, Pennell served as the senior executive of End User Services for the Federal Reserve System. Prior to that, she led a System-wide initiative to consolidate IT service desk operations and served as the executive in charge of the Federal Reserve's server management and internal network consolidations. Karen notably led the establishment of the System’s national customer support function for financial services, consolidating externally facing customer support sites into one virtual service desk. Other early leadership roles included responsibilities in payments-system support and facilities management.

Pennell chartered and co-sponsored the Kansas City Fed’s first Women in Technology community of practice, and a Minorities in Technology Task Force. She also served on the Kansas City STEM Alliance advisory board.

Pennell holds a bachelor’s degree from Missouri State University and an MBA from Rockhurst College, and has participated in certification programs in banking operations and technology at Vanderbilt University. In her early days she helped out on her family’s cattle ranch, and with her husband has two adult sons.