Austrian Central Bank Top-Ranked Woman Counsels ECB Pause

The most senior woman at Austria’s central bank started her career as an experiment.

Doris Ritzberger-Gruenwald gave up an academic post to try out at the institution in 1988. The Austrian schilling was pegged to the German mark at the time and, she says, “there was nothing to analyze.” A quarter of a century later, she’s the bank’s chief economist and one of a handful of women advising the European Central Bank’s Governing Council on monetary policy. Her current tip: Do nothing.