High-profile Federal Reserve member Raphael Bostic is rumored to be in line to become the next chairman of the Federal Reserve. 

Bostic, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, says he often hears speculation that he could be nominated by President Joe Biden to lead the country’s central bank. Jerome Powell’s current term as Fed chair ends in February and he hasn’t indicated a desire to stay on, Bloomberg reported.

“I hear about it all the time,” Bostic said, according to Axios on HBO.

Bostic is the first Black Federal Reserve bank president in the central bank’s history. 

When asked hypothetically what type of Fed chair he’d be, Bostic told Axios he’d do things “differently” than they’ve been done before.

“I’m going to be personal,” Bostic said. “I’m going to be engaging. I’m going to solicit input and really try to not be the chair, who sits up here, and then all the staff is at a different level.”

One issue he might tackle is reparations. In the past, Bostic has said that there are “definitely merits” to reparations. 

“There are definitely merits to it in the sense that, if people have been harmed by laws, then there should be a discussion about redress,” Bostic told CNN Business in an exclusive interview earlier this year.

“We have African Americans today who have a lot less wealth in part because they have not been able to inherit the wealth that would have accrued had their ancestors been able to accrue that wealth.”

Bostic added that racial injustices and the racial wealth gap need to be addressed.

The net worth of a typical white family, $171,000, was nearly 10 times greater than that of a Black family ($17,150) in 2016, according to the Brookings Institute.

Bostic, who is openly gay, has been outspoken on various social issues since taking his post in 2017.

During the covid-19 pandemic, he stressed that the government needed to address health inadequacies due to racism. “The people who had the least are being hit the hardest,” he said.

And he has previously addressed the wealth gap.

“Issues around African Americans and wealth building and the state’s role in preventing that from happening are long recognized,” Bostic said as part of a forum organized by The Atlantic magazine in April 2021, Reuters reported. “It is important we consider a wide range of possibilities and approaches to try and make amends for that. Reparations are one of them.”

And, he has spoken out about racism in the U.S.  He said that “obviously” he has faced racism and discrimination in his own life and career.

“If you’re an African American, people are going to judge you by how you look,” he told CNN. “In certain situations, that means you’re going to be under different types of scrutiny.”

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Bostic, who grew up in New Jersey and graduated from Harvard University in 1987, earned a doctorate in economics at Stanford University. In 1995, he joined the Fed’s research department and later worked at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. In 2017, he joined the Atlanta Fed, leaving a post at the University of Southern California, where he was a department chair in the university’s school of public policy.

Bostic became the first and so far only African American appointed to head one of the Fed’s 12 regional reserve banks.