The NCUA has a new spokesman: John Fairbanks has joined the agency's office of public and congressional affairs in the position of public Affairs specialist. He will replace John Zimmerman, who had been filling the post for the regulator as a temporary contractor since December 2011.

Fairbanks joins the NCUA from the Washington-based Brookings Institution, where he served the last two and a half years as a senior media relations officer in the Metropolitan Policy program. Prior to joining Brookings, he served as the public affairs manager for the Vermont Housing Finance Agency for eight years. Additionally, he has five years' of communications and press experience in Congress, and has worked as a consultant at various points in his career.

Fairbanks grew up in the St. Louis area, earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Southern Illinois University, and undertook a Vermont Legal Apprenticeship, a four-year independent study of law under a supervising general-practice attorney. He also completed the Senior Executives in State and Local Government Program at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. –[email protected]