Mobile payments startup Square has added some economic muscle to its board of directors with Larry Summers, the former U.S. Treasury secretary and former president of Harvard.
Summers will join an all-star board that includes venture capitalists Vinod Khosla (Khosla Ventures), Roelof Botha (Sequoia Capital, PayPal), Gideon Yu (Khosla, Sequoia, YouTube, Facebook, San Francisco 49ers) and CEO Jack Dorsey.
“Square is at a key point in our trajectory and we know Larry will contribute tremendous wisdom and expertise toward our continued success,” Dorsey said in a statement.
Summers was the 71st secretary of the Treasury, from 1999 to 2001, during the end of Bill Clinton's presidency. He then moved on to become the president of Harvard University from 2001 until his resignation in 2006. While at Harvard, Summers heard and dismissed a claim by the Winklevoss twins that Mark Zuckerberg had stolen their idea to found Facebook -- a scene later portrayed in the movie The Social Network.
More recently, Summers served as President Obama's director of the National Economic Council, a position he held from January 2009 to December 2010. He also served as the chief economist of the World Bank.