Herbert M. Allison, Jr. was appointed as President and Chief Executive Officer of Fannie Mae in September 2008 by Director James Lockhart of Federal Housing Finance Agency, as conservator of Fannie Mae.

Prior to being appointed to Fannie Mae, he was Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of TIAA-CREF from 2002 until his retirement in 2008.

He began his professional career in 1971 as an associate in the investment banking division of Merrill Lynch in New York. After postings in Paris, Tehran and London, Mr. Allison served at various times as Treasurer, Director of Human Resources, Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President for the Investment Banking, Equity and Debt Divisions before being elected President, Chief Operating Officer and a member of the Board of Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc., in 1997.

After leaving Merrill Lynch in mid-1999, he served as National Finance Chairman for U.S. Senator John McCain's first Presidential Campaign.

From 2000 to 2002, Mr. Allison was President and Chief Executive Officer of the Alliance for Lifelong Learning, Inc., a joint venture of Oxford, Stanford and Yale Universities, offering online, college-level courses to adults.

Mr. Allison is a director of Time Warner Inc., and a member of the Advisory Board of the Yale School of Management, the Advisory Council of the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's International Advisory Committee.

He was a director of the New York Stock Exchange from 2003-2005. In recent years Mr. Allison also chaired the Business-Higher Education Forum and the Vietnam Education Foundation and served on the Business Roundtable, the Financial Services Roundtable, recently served on the Board of Directors of The Conference Board, the Board of Trustees of The Economic Club of New York, the New York State Commission to Modernize the Regulation of Financial Services, the New York State Commission on Education Reform and the Council of Graduate Schools Advisory Committee.

Mr. Allison earned a B.A. in Philosophy from Yale University. Following four years as an officer in the U.S. Navy, including a year in Vietnam, he received an M.B.A. from Stanford University.