Peter R. Orszag

Peter Richard Orszag (born December 16, 1968) is an American business executive and former government official. He is the chief executive officer (CEO) and chairman of Lazard.

Orszag's past positions included being the 37th director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under President Barack Obama and director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

Orszag is a member of the National Academy of Medicine of the National Academies of Sciences. He is on the Boards of Directors of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Mount Sinai Hospital, and the Institute for Advanced Study.

Orszag grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts, the son of Reba (née Karp) and Steven Orszag, the president and owner of a research and development company and a math professor, respectively. His paternal great-grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Hungary who immigrated to New York City in 1903. His brother is Jonathan Orszag.

After graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy with high honors (1987), Orszag earned an A.B. in economics from Princeton University in 1991. He then received a M.Sc. (1992) and a Ph.D. (1997) in economics from the London School of Economics on the Marshall Scholarship. He was a Marshall Scholar 1991–1992, and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

Orszag became a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, and taught macroeconomics in 1999 and 2000. He then became a senior fellow and deputy director of economic studies at the Brookings Institution. In 2006 he co-founded and directed The Hamilton Project and was its first director. He was also director of the Pew Charitable Trust's Retirement Security Project.

He was Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy (1997–1998), and as Senior Economist and Senior Adviser on the Council of Economic Advisers (1995–1996) during the Clinton administration. After leaving the Clinton White House, he formed a consulting group called Sebago Associates, which merged into Competition Policy Associates and was bought by FTI Consulting Inc. for a reported $70 million in 2005. He has been a columnist at Bloomberg Opinion.

Orszag was director of the Congressional Budget Office from January 2007 to November 2008. During his time at the CBO, he added 20 full-time health analysts (bringing the total number to 50).

He was widely praised for his time at CBO for preparing the agency for the debates to come.

On November 25, 2008, President-elect Barack Obama announced that Orszag would be his nominee for director of the Office of Management and Budget, the arm of the White House responsible for crafting the federal budget and overseeing the effectiveness of federal programs.

Orszag's first wife was Cameron Rachel Hamill. They had two children before divorcing. In 2009, he fathered a child with his former girlfriend, Claire Milonas, daughter of shipping magnate Spiros Milonas. In 2010, Orszag married Bianna Golodryga, then co-host of ABC's GMA Weekend. They have a son and a daughter. Orszag is Jewish. In 2014, a judge ruled in Orszag's favor in a child support case brought by his first wife.