At the 2017 Poet Awards, Jeffrey C. Cleveland (’02) was named Outstanding Young Alumnus. Cleveland is a principal and the chief economist at Payden & Rygel, a global asset management company with more than $115 billion in assets under management. He is responsible for developing views on the U.S. and global economy His research areas include macroeconomics, central banks and money markets, money supply, and credit cycles. Cleveland is a frequent speaker at industry focums and is often quoted in the financial media. He has appeared on CNBC, Bloomberg, and Fox Business News.
Cleveland is a member of the National Association for Business Economics (NABE). Cleveland earned an M.A. in international political economy with an emphasis in international money and finance from Claremont Graduate University, and a B.A. in economics and global political economy as a Whittier Scholars graduate of Whittier College. His Scholars Project was titled “The Future of Money: An Austrian Theoretical Analysis of the Political Economics of Money” and explored, among other topics, the possibility of the rise of a virtual currency — years before Bitcoin.
As an avid open-water swimmer, Cleveland swam across the English Channel in September 2008, across the Catalina Channel in 2009, and around Manhattan in 2010. He was the 34th swimmer in history to complete this “triple crown” of open water swimming.
