David E. Altig is senior vice president and director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. His responsibilities include advising the Bank president on monetary policy and related matters, overseeing the Bank's research department and regional executives, and sitting on the Bank's management and discount committees. Altig also serves as an adjunct professor of economics in the graduate school of business at the University of Chicago. Previously, he was vice president and associate director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, which he joined in 1991 as an economist. Prior to joining the Cleveland Fed, Altig was a faculty member in the department of business economics and public policy at Indiana University. His research focuses primarily on monetary and fiscal policy and has been published in such journals as the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking; the American Economic Review; and the Journal of Monetary Economics. Altig received a bachelor's degree in business administration from the University of Iowa and a master's degree and a doctorate in economics from Brown University.
William G. Clark is senior vice president and chief information officer of the Federal Reserve Employee Benefits System. He has directed the investments for the Federal Reserve's defined benefit and defined contribution plans since March 2010. In total, the plans have approximately $17 billion in assets under management and cover approximately 30,000 participants. Since joining the Federal Reserve, Clark helped to restructure the organization's defined contribution plan by adding new investment options and reducing fees. For the defined benefit plan, he is leading the effort to restructure the portfolio's public equity and fixed-income allocations and to initiate exposures to private equity and real estate. Previously, Clark oversaw the investments and operations of the New Jersey pension fund, which provides retirement benefits for more than 700,000 current and future public retirees in seven public pension systems. Total assets under management by the division were approximately $80 billion. As director, Clark guided the fund's transition from one primarily invested in domestic equities and fixed-income securities to one that includes 22 percent international equities and 7 percent alternative investments (private equity, hedge funds, hedge fund of funds, and real estate). Before that position, he served as senior vice president of MBL Life Assurance Corporation, where he directed the company's group pension and mutual fund businesses. Clark received a BS from Villanova University and a master's degree in business administration from Rutgers University.
Erica Coe is an associate principal in the New Jersey office of McKinsey & Company and a leader in McKinsey's Healthcare Systems & Services Practice in North America. She also coleads McKinsey's Center for U.S. Health Systems Reform. Coe has spent more than 10 years working with the management teams of leading public- and private-sector health care organizations. She is McKinsey's leading expert in individual market exchange/reform readiness, from strategy to execution. She serves clients in the payer, provider, public, and social sectors. Coe has been most active with payers, where her experience spans both commercial health plans and governments, focusing extensively on driving strategic and organizational change. She been integral in building McKinsey's knowledge of health reform and modeling the market impacts of reform, and is currently leading the company's efforts to understand the implications of health reform legislation on specific stakeholders, the U.S. health system, and the broader economy. Prior to joining McKinsey, Coe worked for a boutique strategy consultancy serving pharmaceutical, medical device, and diagnostic firms. She also worked at Massachusetts General Hospital, collaborating on clinical trial research and assisting in management of a nonprofit. She currently serves on the board of the National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI).
David Cutler is the Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics at Harvard. He holds secondary appointments at the Kennedy School of Government and the School of Public Health. Honored for his scholarly work and singled out for outstanding mentorship of graduate students, Cutler's work in health economics and public economics has earned him significant academic and public acclaim. He served on the Council of Economic Advisers and the National Economic Council during the Clinton administration and has advised the presidential campaigns of Bill Bradley, John Kerry, and Barack Obama as well as being senior health care adviser for the Obama presidential campaign. Among other affiliations, Cutler has held positions with the National Institutes of Health and the National Academy of Sciences. Currently, he is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a member of the Institute of Medicine, and a fellow of the Employee Benefit Research Institute. He advises many companies and groups on health care. Cutler was a key adviser in the formulation of the recent cost control legislation in Massachusetts, and is one of the members of the Health Policy Commission created to help reduce medical spending in that state. He is the author of two books, including Your Money or Your Life: Strong Medicine for America's Health Care System, several chapters in edited books, and many published papers on health care and other public policy topics. Cutler received an AB from Harvard University and a PhD in economics from MIT.
William (Denny) Dennis Jr. is a senior research fellow at the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB). He has directed NFIB's Research Foundation since 1976 and has served as president of the International Council for Small Business. Besides managing the research program of the NFIB Research Foundation, his responsibilities include long-term policy planning, policy conferences, and annual surveys. He has testified numerous times before congressional committees regarding key small-business issues like availability of credit and health care. Recently he was honored by the Small Business Administration with the Special Advocacy Award, which recognized him as "one of small business's most committed advocates, with considerable expertise in small business research."
Christine Eibner is an economist at the RAND Corporation, specializing in applied econometrics and cost analyses. Eibner's current research focuses on socioeconomic disparities in health; employer-sponsored insurance; military medical policy; the economics of substance abuse; trends in the availability and affordability of private health insurance; and modeling the effect of health care policy changes on costs, insurance coverage, and other outcomes. Much of her work involves quantitative analysis of large data sets, including the National Health Interview Survey, the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, and the National Compensation Survey. Her work in the RAND Center for Military Health Policy Research has focused on demand for TRICARE, maintaining the operational readiness of Department of Defense medical providers, and the economic costs of mental illness resulting from exposure to combat. Her research for the RAND Institute for Civil Justice includes an analysis of health insurance costs for small businesses, with a focus on how growing health insurance costs have affected other forms of compensation at small firms. Prior to joining RAND, Eibner was an intern at the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (now the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality) and a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University. She earned a PhD in economics from the University of Maryland–College Park.
Ann C. Gallo is a partner at Wellington Management Company. As a global industry analyst in global industry research, she specializes in the health care services industry. She conducts fundamental analysis on the companies within her industry and makes buy/sell recommendations to portfolio managers based on her findings and market conditions. Gallo is a member of Wellington Management's health care team that manages health and biotechnology sector mutual funds and hedge funds, and she currently serves as coordinator for several of the team-managed portfolios. Prior to joining Wellington Management in 1998, she was a health care analyst with BT Alex. Brown. She was also an investment banker and, subsequently, a health care analyst at Piper Jaffray in Minneapolis. Previously, she was a financial analyst with Citibank N.A. and an accountant with Coopers & Lybrand. Gallo received a BS in accounting from Boston College and an MS in finance and applied economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Edward A. Kaplan is a senior vice president and national health practice leader at Segal Consulting. He has worked with managed care programs since 1986, with special emphasis on pricing and plan design strategies for managed medical, dental, and prescription drug programs working with national and local corporations, governments, and collective bargain plans. He created the Segal Health Plan Trend Cost Survey in 1996, now a standard in the industry, and helped build Segal's national reputation as a leader in prescription drug plan benefit consulting and pharmacy benefits management consulting. Prior to joining Segal, Kaplan served as an associate manager of underwriting for a major insurance carrier, where he helped to develop managed care plan designs, pricing techniques, and financial risk sharing arrangements. He also served as a health consultant for a major consulting firm, where he assisted in the development of rate manuals for managed medical, dental, and prescription drug programs and was involved in several special studies related to managed care, including on the prescription drug "shoebox" effect, HMO "skimming," and other managed care issues. Kaplan received a BA in economics from Rutgers University.
Rob Kight is vice president for global human resource services and labor relations at Delta Air Lines Inc. He began his career at Delta as an analyst in 1985 and held positions of increasing responsibility including director of human resources, Europe, based in Frankfurt, Germany, and director, human resources services. He was managing director of human resources operations when he left Delta to pursue an opportunity in the technology industry in early 2000. Kight returned to Delta in 2004 as managing director of worldwide benefits and health resources and was promoted to his present position in 2005. His current responsibilities include the strategic alignment, development, and delivery of all of Delta's global compensation, recognition, and benefit programs, as well as oversight of Delta's equal opportunity functions, human resources information systems, and occupational health resources. He is a member of the board of trustees of the Ron Clark Academy and a member of the board of the American Benefits Council. Kight graduated from Duke University cum laude with a BA in English literature and history.
Jon Kingsdale joined Wakely Consulting Group's Boston office in 2010 as director, bringing his extensive experience in health care exchanges to the company. A frequent author and contributor to health care publications, Kingsdale is widely sought on both the state and national stage for his health care reform insights and public policy guidance. He was the founding executive director of the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority, an independent state agency established in 2006 under Massachusetts' landmark health reform legislation. As the executive director for the country's inaugural health benefit exchange, he led key initiatives to make health insurance universally available and to reform health care financing in Massachusetts. As a senior executive at Tufts Health Plan for 20 years, he was responsible for strategic planning, product development, public affairs, and government relations. Prior to working at Tufts Health Plan, he worked in strategic planning and reimbursement at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, researched hospital finances at the Harvard School of Public Health, consulted on health policy issues in Washington, DC, and worked as a reporter for Forbes.
James A. Klein is president of the American Benefits Council, a trade association based in Washington, DC, representing primarily Fortune 500 companies that either sponsor or administer health and retirement benefits covering more than 100 million Americans. Klein is frequently quoted in both the national and benefits media on pension and health care topics. He is a founding board member of Americans for Generational Equity and serves on the Government Liaison Committee of the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans. Klein is also a private-sector adviser to the U.S. government's delegation to the Pension and Insurance Committee of the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). He was a member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies Global Aging Initiative. He travels extensively internationally advising public officials and private-sector representatives on the development of retirement and health care systems. Prior to joining the American Benefits Council, Klein was manager of pension and health care policy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and before that practiced law for a Washington, DC, firm specializing in employee benefits. He also worked as a legislative assistant for Congressman John J. LaFalce (D-NY). Klein graduated magna cum laude from Tufts University with a degree in bioethics and graduated with honors from the National Law Center-George Washington University.
Dennis P. Lockhart is president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. In this role he is responsible for all of the Bank's activities, including monetary policy, bank supervision and regulation, and payment services. He also chairs the Bank's management committee. Prior to joining the Atlanta Fed in March 2007, Lockhart served on the faculty of Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service, teaching in the master's program and chairing the program's concentrations in international business-government relations and global commerce and finance. He was also an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University's Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. Prior to his academic career Lockhart was managing partner at the private equity firm Zephyr Management LP. He also worked at Heller Financial, where he served as executive vice president and director of the parent company and as president of Heller International Group. Previously, Lockhart held various positions, both domestic and international, with Citicorp/Citibank. He holds a bachelor's degree in political science and economics from Stanford University and a master's degree in international economics and American foreign policy from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
Paul Mango is a director in the Pittsburgh office of McKinsey & Company. He led the company's Global Health Care Practice from 2003 to 2011, and currently lead's McKinsey's Health Reform Center. Mango has led recent health care engagements spanning a broad spectrum of strategy, operations, and organization topics, with an increasing emphasis on health reform, the impact of consumer-directed health, development of distinctive service strategies, application of lean manufacturing principles to patient care delivery processes, and medical tourism. He works extensively with some of the country's largest health insurers, academic medical centers, and other provider organizations. He has also spent a significant amount of time serving health care clients in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. He is currently leading McKinsey's efforts to understand the implications of health reform legislation on health insurers, providers, and employers. Prior to joining McKinsey in 1988, Mango served five years as a field artillery officer in the U.S. Army. His formal education includes a general engineering degree from West Point, where he graduated as a distinguished cadet in 1981, and an MBA from Harvard University, where he graduated as a Baker Scholar in 1988. Mango is currently an advisory board member for the Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania.
Mark Maselli has been a principal of Towers Perrin since 2004. He joined Towers Perrin in 2001 as a consultant. Maselli has been a director of Towers Watson & Company since January 1, 2010. He has been a member of Towers Perrin's board of directors since 2007. He is an associate of the Society of Actuaries, a member of the American Academy of Actuaries, and an enrolled actuary in the Joint Board for Enrolled Actuaries. Maselli graduated from Rutgers University with a BA in mathematics and economics.
Paul S. McAuliffe serves as executive director of the Federal Reserve Employee Benefits System. The office manages all consolidated System benefits programs, including retirement, thrift, health, life, disability, and voluntary benefits. Its role includes benefits design, administration, communications, accounting, and investment management. Previously, McAuliffe served as director of ethics and business practices and chief ethics officer at Becton, Dickinson and Company (BD), a worldwide manufacturer of medical and diagnostic equipment. Before that role, he was director of compensation and benefits at BD, with worldwide responsibility for the design and oversight of the company's compensation and benefits programs. He also served as president of the Managed Health Care Association, a professional group for managers and practitioners involved with managed health care programs. McAuliffe worked for 12 years for BP America, the U.S. arm of British Petroleum, and its predecessor company The Standard Oil Company (Ohio) in a variety of capacities in the legal and human resources fields. He has experience in private law practice and U.S. government service in Washington, DC, with the Departments of Labor and Housing and Urban Development and the Council on Wage and Price Stability. He was the principal author of the council's path-breaking report on health care inflation, The Problem of Rising Health Care Costs (1976). He holds BA and JD degrees from Yale University and an MBA from Case Western Reserve University. He is a member and chair of the board of directors for the Institute for Global Ethics. The institute works with private- and public-sector organizations in several countries to improve ethical decision making and practice.
Alicia Sasser Modestino is a senior economist in the New England Public Policy Center at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Prior to joining the Bank, Modestino worked as an economist in the private sector and taught economics at Mount Holyoke College. Her current research focuses on the labor force, migration, housing affordability, and expansions in health insurance coverage. Her work has appeared in journals such as Regional Science & Urban Economics, Journal of Human Resources, and Health Affairs and has been presented at annual meetings of the American Economic Association, the Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management, and the National Tax Association. Modestino earned both a master's degree and a PhD in economics from Harvard University, where she also served as a doctoral fellow in the Inequality and Social Policy Program at the Kennedy School of Government.
Michael Morrisey is a professor of health economics and health insurance in the Department of Health Care Organization and Policy at the University of Alabama–Birmingham (UAB). He is director of the Lister Hill Center for Health Policy, an endowed research center at UAB, and codirector of the Center for Outcomes and Effectiveness Research & Education (COERE). His research interests have largely focused on employer sponsored health insurance, on the effects of legislation and regulation in health and health care, and on hospital economics. He is currently examining the economic and disease burden of osteoporosis. His textbook Health Insurance was published in 2008. Morrisey is the author of four other books and numerous papers and reports. He is an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a fellow of the Employee Benefits Research Institute, and a member of several editorial boards. Morrisey is the treasurer of the American Society of Health Economists and served for 10 years as the treasurer and then secretary/treasurer of the International Health Economics Association. He was the first recipient of the John Thompson Young Investigator Award for health services research given by the Association of University Programs in Health Administration. In 2000 Morrisey was the recipient of the UAB School of Public Health Distinguished Investigator Award and in 2001 received the UAB School of Public Health President's Award for Teaching. He holds a PhD in economics from the University of Washington–Seattle.
Alec Phillips is a vice president in the economic research group of Goldman, Sachs & Company, based in Washington, DC. He joined Goldman's equity research group in 2000, and in 2003 moved to the economics group to provide insight for the firm's institutional and corporate clients on fiscal policy, housing and mortgage issues, financial regulation, trade, health care, and energy policy. Prior to joining Goldman Sachs, Phillips served on the staff of the Senate Finance Committee under Chairman Bill Roth. He has a BA in political science from Colgate University.
M. Melinda Pitts is the director of the Center for Human Capital Studies in the research department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Her major fields of study are health and labor economics. She also contributes to the Atlanta Fed's macroblog, which provides commentary on economic topics, including monetary policy, macroeconomic developments, and the Southeast economy. Prior to joining the Bank in 2002, Pitts was an assistant professor of economics at Georgia State University, in Atlanta. She also worked as an assistant professor of economics at Salisbury State University in Salisbury, Maryland. Pitts has published in several journals, including Industrial Relations, the American Economic Review, Archives of Internal Medicine, and Research in Labor Economics. She is a member of the American Economic Association, International Health Economics Association, American Society of Health Economists, and the Society of Labor Economics. She received a BA in economics from Clemson University. Pitts received both her master's degree and doctorate in economics from North Carolina State University.
Theodore A. Prospect is the chief actuary of a UnitedHealthcare business (United Essentials) that is focused on research and new product development. In this role, Prospect has led efforts to develop highly innovative products and programs to extend both affordable and portable coverage to targeted employer and consumer segments. He has over 20 years of experience in the insurance and consulting industries. Prior to joining UnitedHealth Group, he was a partner and senior manager in Hewitt Associates' Health Management Practice. In that role, Prospect worked with large employers on their active and retiree health care programs with a particular focus on strategy, design, and financial aspects of their programs. He was also a national resource for Hewitt's initiatives regarding the uninsured and underinsured.
John C. Robertson is a vice president and senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. He is the team leader for the economic research group at the Atlanta Fed and is one of the Bank's senior monetary policy advisers. Robertson also leads the Bank's efforts to leverage its regional presence to provide timely economic information on business activity in support of the Bank's monetary policy analysis. He joined the Atlanta Fed's research department in December of 1997 from the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. A native of Dunedin, New Zealand, Robertson holds a bachelor's and a master's degree from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. He earned his PhD in economics from Virginia Tech in 1992.
Charles Roehrig is a vice president and Altarum Institute fellow who directs Altarum's Center for Sustainable Health Spending. His research interests include timelier tracking of health spending, determining its sustainable growth rate, and modeling its future growth. He has overseen development of the Altarum Health Sector Economic Indicators, which provide monthly tracking of health spending, prices, utilization, and employment. He developed the Triangle of Painful Choices to illustrate the link between the federal budget and the sustainable rate of health spending. He also led the development of estimates of national health spending by medical condition, including spending on prevention, and has extended this research to include the impact of disease prevalence on expenditure growth. Roehrig is currently studying the impact of primary prevention on health spending and is modeling the impact of business cycles on health spending growth. He also has many years of experience in modeling health workforce supply and requirements. His work has been published in Health Affairs and the New England Journal of Medicine, and he blogs regularly for Altarum's Health Policy Forum and Health Affairs. In addition to his applied research, Roehrig has published in the field of theoretical econometrics in academic journals such as Econometrica and the Journal of Econometrics. He has a BA in economics from Amherst College, an MS in statistics from the University of Michigan, and a PhD in economics from the University of Michigan.
Scott Smith is vice president of compensation and benefits for the Home Depot. In this capacity, he is responsible for setting strategy as well as designing and administering all of the company's compensation and benefit programs. Smith also has responsibility for the company's medical health management and relocation functions. Prior to joining the Home Depot, he held several human resources, finance, and compensation positions at Gap Inc. He earned his bachelor's degree from the University of Missouri and his MBA from Golden Gate University.
Jeris Stueland is the payer knowledge expert in McKinsey & Company's health care systems and services practice. She leads development of proprietary knowledge on various topics applicable to payer and large employer clients. Recent knowledge efforts she has led include the implications of health care reform on the distribution of health coverage products, as well as the implications of reform for employers and large group payers. Stueland recently coauthored a McKinsey Quarterly article on the impact of reform on employers, which was widely publicized for reporting (based on survey results) that the employer interest in shifting away from traditional employer-sponsored insurance could be significantly higher than previously suggested by some other organizations. She serves large employer clients on employee health care and other benefits strategy, and health care payers on various strategic questions. Stueland has a BS in physics from Michigan State University, where she graduated with honors and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, and a PhD in history (specializing in the history of science) from Princeton University.
Kent Wallace is chief executive officer for RegionalCare Hospital Partners. He is also a member of the company's board of directors. Prior to joining RegionalCare, he served as president and chief operating officer for Vanguard Health Systems since 2005. He also previously served as market president for Vanguard's Texas region, "the Baptist Health System," a leading provider of health care in San Antonio and South Texas, which was comprised of five acute-care hospitals and other related health care services. Prior to working at Vanguard, he was group president for Province Healthcare, Columbia/HCA, and HealthTrust. He has more than 25 years of health care operations experience.
Tracy Watts is a partner in Mercer Consulting's Washington, DC, office and the company's U.S. leader for health care reform. A consultant with Mercer for over 25 years, she is the client solutions leader for the health and benefits business in the South. She specializes in health care cost management, assisting employers in the design, evaluation, and ongoing management of health and group benefit plans for active and retired employees. As a spokesperson for Mercer on health care reform and also Mercer's National Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Plans—a survey of over 3,000 employees across the country—Watts has been quoted in Business Insurance, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Washington Times, Money Magazine, USA Today, and has appeared live on CNN Financial, Fox News, and MSNBC. She has coauthored several articles on the impact of health care reform on employer-sponsored health plans. Watts is a member of the National Business Group on Health National Leadership Committee on Consumerism and Engagement. She coauthored a chapter, "Employer Coverage Trends," in Rise to Prominence—The PPO Story, published by the American Association of Preferred Provider Organizations. She served on the standards committee for URAC/American Accreditation HealthCare Commission. She is a graduate of Texas Christian University.
Elizabeth H. Weatherman is managing director of health care for Warburg Pincus. She joined Warburg Pincus in 1988 and leads the firm's investment activities in the health care sector, an area in which she helped build the firm's domain expertise. Weatherman is also a member of the firm's executive management group and a director of Accriva, Home Dialysis Plus, JHP Pharmaceuticals, Silk Road Medical, and Tornier. She received a BA summa cum laude in English from Mount Holyoke College and holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Gretchen Young is the senior vice president of health policy for the ERISA Industry Committee (ERIC). She works in Washington, DC, where her primary responsibilities include working as a registered congressional lobbyist on federal health issues and monitoring the work of Congress and the executive agencies with respect to health benefits. Her primary focus over the past two years has been the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the accompanying regulations. She also has devoted considerable time and attention to employer wellness programs and the threats to them posed by the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Prior to her work at ERIC, Young covered both retirement and health issues for several large consulting firms. She has worked for over 25 years in the employee benefits field, including stints at three federal agencies that regulate ERISA plans: the Internal Revenue Service, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, and the Department of Labor.