María Griego-Raby joins the Kansas City Board of Directors after serving as a member of the Tenth District’s Economic Advisory Council.
Griego-Raby is principal and president of Contract Associates Inc., a commercial and office furniture company she founded in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The company has operations throughout New Mexico, in southwest Texas and northeast Arizona, including part of the Navajo Nation.
“We’re a full-service company, which means we provide products and services to corporate and government offices, educational and health-care facilities, as well as to hospitality customers,” Griego-Raby said. “We also spend many of our efforts servicing and working on long-term projects for Los Alamos National Laboratory (northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico) and Sandia National Laboratories (based in Albuquerque).”
Griego-Raby serves on the boards of several organizations, including New Mexico Mutual, University of New Mexico Rainforest Innovations, and the UNM Lobo Development Corporation. She has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Business Administration from the University of New Mexico.
In addition to more than 30 years as a business and civic leader, Griego-Raby brings direct Reserve Bank experience from her time on the Economic Advisory Council. The council, established in 1985, comprises business and labor representatives who meet with Kansas City Fed leadership to offer insight on the regional economy.
“My time serving on the Council gave me a view of how the Tenth District operates, as well as an opportunity to understand and learn from others,” she said. “It added information and perspective, and it also gave me a sense that we’re all in this together, and we all share some of the same recent struggles in our region.”
For example, she noted that New Mexico’s economy is experiencing changes that offer valuable lessons for the District.
“We are struggling to make that transition from total reliance on fossil fuel and mining, as we are faced with how we move toward a new economy that is a green economy,” Griego-Raby said. “There’s a lot of transformation going on, so I find that very exciting to understand, to learn and to share.”
Among many other public service roles, Griego-Raby has served on New Mexico’s State Board of Finance and the University of New Mexico’s Board of Regents. She said that joining the Reserve Bank’s Kansas City Board presents an outlet to convey points of view from a wide range of people and organizations in the region.
“I have an opportunity to interact with many different people in our community who can give a perspective other than mine,” she said. “Serving as a director gives me an opportunity to share with the Federal Reserve what is really happening on the ground level in our community. Serving in this position is such an honor, and I’m very much looking forward to the entire experience.”
Learn more about Ms. Griego-Raby here.