Speaker Biographies
David Altig is executive vice president and director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. He advises the Bank's president on monetary policy and related matters and serves on the management and discount committees. He leads the Atlanta Fed's macroblog, which provides commentary on economic topics. Before coming to the Atlanta Fed, Altig was vice president and associate director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, which he had joined in 1991 as an economist. Previously, Altig was a faculty member in the Department of Business Economics and Public Policy at Indiana University. He serves as an adjunct professor of economics in the graduate school of business at the University of Chicago and has also lectured at many other schools including Ohio State University, Brown University, Duke University, the University of Wisconsin, and in the Chinese Executive MBA program sponsored by the University of Minnesota and Lingnan College of Sun Yat-Sen University. Altig graduated from the University of Iowa with a bachelor's degree in business administration and earned his master's and doctoral degrees in economics from Brown University.
Ulrich Bindseil is director general of the European Central Bank's (ECB) market operations, responsible for implementing monetary policy (Eurosystem credit operations, collateral framework, outright purchase programs, etc.) and for managing the bank's foreign reserves and investment portfolios. He chairs the ECB's market operations committee, money market contact group and bond market contact group. He is a member of two Bank for International Settlements committees, the Markets Committee and the Committee on the Global Financial System. Bindseil, a German, was previously deputy director general and has led the ECB's risk management division and liquidity management section. He has written many works on European monetary and financial issues.
Sean Collins, senior director of industry and financial analysis at Investment Company Institute (ICI), heads research on the structure of the mutual fund industry, industry trends, and the broader financial markets. Collins, who joined ICI in 2000, is responsible for research on the flows, assets, fees, and industrial organization of registered investment companies (mutual funds, ETFs, and closed-end funds), financial market issues of interest to funds and assets managers, the costs and benefits of laws and regulations that govern funds, and research on systemic risk. Previously, Collins was a staff economist at the Federal Reserve Board and also was an economist at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, where he participated on the monetary policy committee. He is a member of the Group of Economic Advisers (GEA) to the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA). Collins has a PhD in economics from the University of California-Santa Barbara and a bachelor's in economics from Claremont McKenna College.
William C. Dudley became the 10th president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in January 2009. In that capacity, he serves as vice chairman and a permanent member of the Federal Open Market Committee. Previously, Dudley was executive vice president of the New York Fed's markets group, which oversees domestic open market and foreign exchange trading operations and the provision of account services to foreign central banks. Prior to joining the New York Fed, Dudley had been a partner and managing director at Goldman, Sachs & Company, where he was the firm's chief U.S. economist for a decade, and served as a vice president at the former Morgan Guaranty Trust Company. He was an economist at the Federal Reserve Board from 1981 to 1983. In 2012, Dudley was appointed chairman of the Committee on the Global Financial System of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). He is a member of the BIS board and chairman of the Economic Club of New York. Dudley earned a PhD in economics from the University of California-Berkeley and a bachelor's degree from New College of Florida.
Itay Goldstein is the Joel S. Ehrenkranz Family Professor in the finance department at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he also coordinates the PhD program in finance. He has been on the Wharton School faculty since 2004. He is an expert in corporate finance, financial institutions, and financial markets, and his research has been published in top academic journals and featured in the Economist, Bloomberg, Forbes, National Public Radio, and other media. He has served as an academic advisor at the Federal Reserve Banks of New York, Philadelphia, and Richmond, the Bank of Canada, and the Committee for Capital Markets Regulation. Before joining Wharton, Goldstein was a faculty member at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and had worked in the research department of the Bank of Israel. He earned a PhD in economics at Tel Aviv University.
Marvin Goodfriend is the Friends of Allan Meltzer Professor of Economics at Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business. From 1993 to 2005, he was director of research and policy adviser at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, regularly attending meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee. He has also been a visiting economist at the Federal Reserve Board and a senior staff economist for the President's Council of Economic Advisers at the White House. He has served on three-person panels to evaluate research and policy advice at the European Central Bank, Norges Bank, the Swedish Riksbank, and the Swiss National Bank. He is a member of the economic advisory panel of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and a past member of its monetary policy panel. Goodfriend has a PhD in economics from Brown University and a bachelor's in mathematics from Union College.
Lawrence Harris holds the Fred V. Keenan Chair in Finance at University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business. He was chief economist of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from July 2002 through June 2004. He contributed extensively to the development of regulations implementing Sarbanes-Oxley, the resolution of the mutual fund timing crisis, the specification of the proposed Regulation NMS (National Market System), the promotion of bond price transparency, and numerous legal cases. Harris also directed the SEC's Office of Economic Analysis in which 35 economists, analysts, and support staff engaged in regulatory analysis, litigation support, and basic economic research. He has written extensively about trading rules, transaction costs, and market regulations. His book Trading and Exchanges: Market Microstructure for Practitioners is regarded as a "must read" for entrants into the securities industry. He is research coordinator for the Institute for Quantitative Research in Finance (The Q-Group), and his professional service has included assignments with the SEC and New York Stock Exchange. He earned a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago and is a chartered financial analyst.
William C. (Curt) Hunter is dean emeritus at the Henry B. Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa, where he was dean from 2006 to 2012. He has held positions at the University of Connecticut, Emory University, and Northwestern University. He also worked as senior vice president and director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and was a vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Hunter has consulted with foreign central banks and official agencies in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. The author of more than 80 scholarly articles and 11 edited books on banking and financial markets issues, Hunter is a founding editor of the Journal of Financial Stability. He has a bachelor's of science degree from Hampton University and MBA and PhD degrees from Northwestern University.
Charles M. Kahn is professor emeritus of finance at the University of Illinois. He was previously the Bailey Memorial Professor in the Department of Finance and had served as department chair. He consults regularly for central banks throughout the world, most recently the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, the Bank of Japan, and the Bank of Ghana. Kahn's research has covered a variety of topics, including labor economics, macroeconomics, economic history, monetary economics, corporate finance, real estate, insurance, and banking. His recent work has focused on payments systems and liquidity, using game theory and contract theory to analyze the design of financial infrastructure. Kahn earned a PhD in economics and a bachelor's in applied mathematics from Harvard University and has a bachelor's in economics from the University of Cambridge.
Paul Kupiec is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). His research focuses on the management and regulation of financial markets and institutions, including developments in bank risk measurement and systemic risk modeling, regulatory policies such as Basel III, and the impact of Dodd-Frank reforms. Before joining AEI, he was director of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's Center for Financial Research. He served as chairman of the Research Task Force of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and has held senior positions at the International Monetary Fund, Freddie Mac, J.P. Morgan, and in the Division of Research and Statistics at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. He holds a PhD in economics from the University of Pennsylvania.
Albert S. (Pete) Kyle has been the Charles E. Smith Chair Professor of Finance at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business since 2006. He has also taught at Princeton University, the University of California-Berkeley, and Duke University. His research focuses on market microstructure, including topics such as smooth trading, high-frequency trading, informed speculative trading, market manipulation, price volatility, and market liquidity. He has been a board member of the American Finance Association, a staff member of the Presidential Task Force on Market Mechanisms (Brady Commission), a consultant to the Securities and Exchange Commission and U.S. Department of Justice, and a member of NASDAQ's economic advisory board. He earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Davidson College, studied philosophy and economics at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar from Texas, and completed his PhD in economics at the University of Chicago. He has an honorary doctoral degree from the Stockholm School of Economics.
Dennis P. Lockhart is the 14th president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. He is responsible for all Bank activities, including monetary policy, bank supervision and regulation, and payment services. He also serves on the Federal Open Market Committee. From 2003 to 2007, Lockhart was on the faculty of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. He also was an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. From 2002 to 2007, he was chairman of the Small Enterprise Assistance Funds, a sponsor/operator of emerging markets venture capital/private equity funds. During his career, Lockhart also was managing partner at the New York-based private equity firm Zephyr Management LP and president of Heller International Group, which had activities in commercial finance and merchant banking in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. In 2000, he served as chairman of the advisory committee of the U.S. Export-Import Bank. Lockhart earned 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.
Mani Mahjouri is the chief investment officer and chief strategist of Tradeworx, responsible for research and implementation of investment strategies at the high-frequency trading firm. He has over 16 years of experience in hedge funds, and previously was global head of foreign exchange at Sun Trading LLC. Before Sun Trading, Mahjouri was a founding principal at Meadowvale Partners, a multi-strategy asset manager, where he was in charge of quantitative strategies. He began his career at AQR Capital Management, where he was a senior member of the Global Asset Allocation team. Mahjouri completed a triple major at MIT, earning bachelor's degrees in physics, mathematics and finance.
Gregory McGreevey joined Invesco in November 2011 as chief executive officer of Invesco Fixed Income. Previously, he was president of Hartford Investment Management and executive vice president and chief investment officer (CIO) of The Hartford Financial Services Group. Prior to joining Hartford Investment Management, McGreevey held a number of positions at ING, including vice chairman and executive vice president of ING Investment Management-Americas Region (IIMAR), business head and CIO for ING's North American proprietary investments, and chief executive of ING Institutional Markets. Earlier in his career, McGreevey was president and CIO of Laughlin Asset Management in Portland, Oregon. He earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Portland and an MBA from Portland State University. He is a CFA charterholder.
The founder and CEO of the Liquidnet global institutional trading network, Seth Merrin is regarded worldwide as a technology innovator. Liquidnet, founded in 2001, connects more than 740 asset managers to large-scale equity trading opportunities in equity markets across five continents. In 2013, Merrin was named chairman of the Milken's Institute's Access to Global Capital Initiative, a nonprofit think tank which brings together multinational firms and foreign governments in developing and emerging markets to implement best practices that enable economic growth. Prior to founding Liquidnet, Merrin co-founded VIE Systems Inc., a financial services application integration software company. He started his first company, Merrin Financial, in 1985, launching the industry's first electronic order-management software. Prior to 1985, Merrin was a risk arbitrage trader for CIBC Oppenheimer. He earned a political science degree from Tufts University.
The president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland since June 2014, Loretta J. Mester participates in the formulation of U.S. monetary policy and oversees 950 employees in Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh who conduct economic research, supervise banks, and provide payment services. Before heading the Cleveland Fed, Mester was executive vice president and director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, where she began working in 1985 as an economist. Mester is an adjunct professor of finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a fellow at the Wharton Financial Institutions Center. She has also taught in the undergraduate finance and MBA programs at Wharton and in the PhD program in finance at New York University. A Baltimore native, Mester has a bachelor's degree in mathematics and economics from Barnard College of Columbia University. Mester earned master's and PhD degrees in economics from Princeton University, where she was a National Science Foundation fellow.
Jamil Nazarali is senior managing director and head of Citadel Execution Services, overseeing Citadel Securities' client market-making offerings in equities, options and foreign exchange. Prior to joining Citadel Securities in 2011, Nazarali was global head of electronic trading at Knight Capital Group. Previously, he was a management consultant at both Ernst & Young and Bain & Company. He is on the board of BATS Global Markets and is also a member of the SEC Equity Market Structure Advisory Committee, Nasdaq Quality of Markets Committee, and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association Market Response Committee. He received a bachelor's degree from the University of Western Ontario and an MBA from the University of Chicago.
Barbara G. Novick, one of the founders of BlackRock, is vice chairman and a member of the firm's global executive and enterprise risk management committees. She also heads the firm's efforts globally on government relations and public policy. From the inception of the firm in 1988 to 2008, she oversaw global business development, marketing and client service across equity, fixed income, liquidity, alternative investment and real estate products for institutional and individual investors and their intermediaries. Prior to BlackRock, she was a vice president in the mortgage products group at the First Boston Corporation and worked at Morgan Stanley. She has written numerous articles on asset management and public policy issues. Novick is a member of CFA Institute's Future of Finance Advisory Council and currently is a trustee of the HCM Foundation and Cornell University, where she earned a bachelor's degree in economics.
Phil Prince is a managing director of Pine River Capital Management and head of Treasury. He chairs Pine River's brokerage committee. Prior to joining Pine River, Prince worked at Goldman Sachs, most recently as managing director and head of central funding within the investment management division. He began at Goldman in 1983 as an associate in repurchase finance and later held a variety of positions including head of U.S. dollar funding for GS Group, general collateral trader, U.S. Treasury arbitrage trader, and co-treasurer of the Investment Management Division. Before Goldman, he was an associate in the financial practice of Arthur Andersen Consulting. Prince received an MBA in finance and accounting from the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business and also attended Vanderbilt University, where he studied economics and philosophy.
Paul Schultz is the John and Maude Clarke Professor of Finance at the University of Notre Dame and the director of Notre Dame's Center for the Study of Financial Regulation. He was also on the faculty at the University of Iowa and Ohio State University. He has served on Nasdaq's Economic Advisory Board and on the editorial boards of the Journal of Finance and Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis. He has written numerous scholarly articles on market microstructure, equity offerings, corporate bond trading costs, and municipal bond offerings. He received a PhD from the University of Chicago.
Manmohan Singh is asenior economist with the International Monetary Fund in Washington. He writes extensively on issues such as rehypothecation and securities lending of collateral, collateral velocity and reuse, monetary policy and collateral, shadow banking, deleveraging in financial markets, and under-collateralization and counterparty risk in the OTC derivatives market. He has written a new book, Collateral and Financial Plumbing, which looks at the above themes from the lens of financial collateral. Singh has written policy notes on several countries including Chile, Japan, India, United States, and the United Kingdom. He holds a PhD and MBA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and earned a bachelor's of science degree from Allegheny College.
Jonathan S. Sokobin oversees the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority's (FINRA) Office of the Chief Economist. As chief economist and senior vice president, he works to develop new rules, analyzes the regulatory impact of existing and potential rulemakings, and scrutinizes data on securities firms and markets. Previously, Sokobin was acting deputy director for research and analysis in the Office of Financial Research at the U.S. Treasury Department. Sokobin also worked as acting director of the Securities and Exchange Commission's then Division of Risk, Strategy, and Financial Innovation. He joined the SEC staff in 2000 and held various positions, including deputy chief economist and director of the former Office of Risk Assessment. He received his PhD and MBA in finance from the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago, and earned a bachelor's degree from Ohio State University.
Jai Sooklal joined Oliver Wyman as a partner in the finance and risk/public policy practices in January 2016. Before then, Sooklal was a senior vice president and head of the Funding, Liquidity, and Interest Rate Risk Supervision Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In that role, he developed a supervisory program supported by liquidity data collection (4G and 5G). Additionally, Sooklal was the designated funding, liquidity, and interest rate risk lead for the Federal Reserve System's Large Institution Supervision Coordination Committee. In that capacity, he pioneered the Federal Reserve's Comprehensive Liquidity Analysis and Review (CLAR) program and was co-chair of the CLAR Steering Committee. He also chaired the international Task Force on Funding established by the Financial Stability Board's data gaps committee, and was the New York Fed's representative on the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision's working group that developed the Basel III international liquidity standards of Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR) and Net Stable Funding Ratio (NSFR). Sooklal holds a bachelor's degree from Columbia University and a master's from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Chester Spatt is the Pamela R. and Kenneth B. Dunn Professor of Finance at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University, where he has taught since 1979. He was chief economist of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and director of its Office of Economic Analysis from July 2004 to July 2007. Spatt has been a leading expert on the design of security markets in various settings, mortgage valuation, and taxation and investment strategy. He is currently a member of the SEC's equity market structure advisory committee, the advisory committee of the Office of Financial Research, and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He was one of the initial members of the Federal Reserve's Model Validation Council. Spatt earned a PhD in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University.
Jeffrey Tessler is a member of the executive board of Deutsche Börse AG and chairman of the board of its Clearstream central securities depository subsidiary. He is responsible for the clients, products, and core markets division that combines derivatives-trading businesses, and the clearinghouses as well as the settlement and custody business of Deutsche Börse. The division also coordinates product development and global sales activities. Tessler is a member of the board of the Luxembourg Banker's Association (ABBL) and chairman of the board of the trade repository REGIS-TR, a joint venture between Clearstream and Spain's Iberclear. Tessler joined Deutsche Börse Group after 25 years at The Bank of New York, where he held key management positions in the United States and Europe. He holds a bachelor's degree in political science and an MBA from Seton Hall University.
Paula Tkac is a vice president and senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. She leads the financial markets group in the Research Department and serves as a policy adviser. She conducts research on various financial market topics including investor decision making, the mutual fund industry, financial regulation, and the recent financial crisis and policy responses. Her research has won two William F. Sharpe Awards at the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis. Tkac was previously assistant vice president with responsibility for the financial markets group. Before joining the Atlanta Fed in 2000, she was on the faculty of the University of Notre Dame's finance department. Tkac earned bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in economics from the University of Chicago.