Keynote Speaker Biographies
John C. Havens is executive director of the IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems. The initiative's goal is to have those involved in the design and development of autonomous and intelligent systems prioritize ethical, values-driven considerations so that the technologies benefit humanity. The IEEE Global Initiative is charged with creating and iterating the document Ethically Aligned Design: A Vision for Prioritizing Human Wellbeing with Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems, which provides standards recommendations. Prior to his role at the initiative, he was an executive vice president of a top public relations firm, a vice president of a tech startup, and an independent consultant, where he has worked with clients such as Gillette, Proctor & Gamble, Hewlett-Packard, Walmart, Ford, Allstate, Monster.com, Gallo Wines, and Merck. He is founder of The Happathon Project, a nonprofit that uses psychology and emerging technology to increase humanity's well-being. Havens is also a contributor on issues of technology and well-being to Mashable.com and The Guardian and is the author of Heartificial Intelligence: Embracing Our Humanity and Hack Happiness: Why Your Personal Data Counts and How Tracking It Can Change the World.
Randal K. Quarles is a member of the Federal Reserve System's Board of Governors and is the Board's vice chairman for supervision. Prior to his appointment to the Board, he was founder and managing director of the Cynosure Group. Before founding the Cynosure Group, Quarles was a partner at The Carlyle Group, a private equity firm. From September 2005 to November 2006, Quarles worked at the U.S. Treasury as undersecretary for domestic finance. Prior to serving as undersecretary, Quarles was assistant secretary for international affairs at the U.S. Treasury. During his tenure, he served as policy chair of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. Prior to joining the Department of the Treasury, Quarles served as the U.S. executive director of the International Monetary Fund. From 1991 to 1993, he served in the Treasury Department as a special assistant to the secretary of the Treasury for banking legislation and as deputy assistant secretary of the Treasury for financial institutions. Quarles received a bachelor's degree in philosophy and economics from Columbia University and a law degree from Yale Law School.
Tao Zhang is deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He brings extensive international economic expertise and experience in policymaking, including with international financial institutions, from his previous appointments as the deputy governor of the People's Bank of China and the IMF's executive director for China from 2011 to 2015. Prior to his position as the deputy governor of the People's Bank of China, Zhang held a number of high-level positions in the bank, including director-general of the Legal Affairs Department, director-general of the International Department, and director-general of Financial Survey and Statistics Department. He also worked at the World Bank from 1995 to 1997 and at the Asian Development Bank from 1997 to 2004. He holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and a master's degree in finance from Tsinghua University in Beijing. Zhang also earned a master's degree and a PhD in international economics from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Other Speaker Biographies
Ryan Adams is a machine learning researcher and professor of computer science at Princeton University. Ryan completed his PhD in physics under David MacKay FRS at the University of Cambridge, where he was a Gates Cambridge Scholar and a member of St. John's College. His doctoral work won honorable mention for the Savage Award for best dissertation in Bayesian theory and methods from the International Society for Bayesian Analysis. Following his PhD, Ryan spent two years as a junior research fellow at the University of Toronto as part of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. From 2011 to 2016, he was an assistant professor at Harvard University in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Ryan was cofounder and chief executive officer of Whetlab LLC, a machine learning startup that was acquired by Twitter in 2015. Ryan has won numerous awards for his papers and has cohosted the popular Talking Machines podcast.
David E. Altig is executive vice president and director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. In addition to advising the Bank president on monetary policy and related matters, Altig oversees the Bank's regional executives and the Bank's research department and serves as a member of the Bank's management and discount committees. Altig is also an adjunct professor of economics in the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago, where he was the recipient of the 2010 Einhorn award for excellence in executive MBA teaching. In 2016, he was elected to a three-year term as a director of the National Association for Business Economics. Prior to joining the Atlanta Fed, Altig was vice president and associate director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. He joined the Cleveland Fed in 1991 as an economist before being promoted in 1997. Before joining the Cleveland Fed, Altig was a faculty member in the department of business economics and public policy at Indiana University. Altig graduated from the University of Iowa with a bachelor's degree in business administration. He earned his master's and doctoral degrees in economics from Brown University.
Scott W. Bauguess is deputy chief economist and deputy director of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) Division of Economic and Risk Analysis. Bauguess oversees the division's risk assessment and data-driven, predictive analytics development, designed to detect fraud and misconduct in the commission's investigation and examination programs, specifically in the areas of corporate issuers, broker-dealers, and asset managers. He directs the commission's economic analyses in recommendations to the commission to enact federal rules related to corporate disclosure and governance, accounting standards, structured finance, and over-the-counter derivatives. His service also includes the business management of the SEC's Tips, Complaints, and Referral system, which was launched in 2010 to accelerate the detection of market misconduct. Bauguess joined the SEC in 2007 from Texas Tech University, where he was on faculty in the College of Business. He continues to teach graduate courses in corporate financial policy at George Washington University. Bauguess received his PhD in finance from Arizona State University.
Raphael W. Bostic is president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. From 2012 to 2017, Bostic was the Judith and John Bedrosian Chair in Governance and the Public Enterprise at the Sol Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California (USC). He was director of USC's master of real estate development degree program and was the founding director of the Casden Real Estate Economics Forecast. Bostic also served USC's Lusk Center for Real Estate as the interim associate director from 2007 to 2009 and as the interim director from 2015 to 2016. From 2016 to 2017, he was the chair of the center's Governance, Management, and Policy Process department. From 2009 to 2012, Bostic was the assistant secretary for policy development and research at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Bostic worked at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors from 1995 to 2001, first as an economist and then a senior. He served as special assistant to HUD's assistant secretary of policy development and research in 1999. He was also a professional lecturer at American University in 1998. He graduated from Harvard University in 1987 with a combined major in economics and psychology. He earned his doctorate in economics from Stanford University in 1995.
John P. Cunningham studies machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), having published extensively in AI and its applications. He is a professor at Columbia University in the Department of Statistics, Data Science Institute, and Center for the Statistics of Mind and has received multiple major awards including the Sloan Fellowship and McKnight Fellowship. He has frequently contributed as an AI expert for enterprises and investors and currently serves as an adviser to or investor in a number of AI companies. His has an undergraduate degree in computer science from Dartmouth College, a master's degree and PhD from Stanford University, and a fellowship at the University of Cambridge.
Francis X. Diebold is Paul F. and Warren S. Miller Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, where he is also a professor of economics, finance, and statistics. He has published widely in the fields of econometrics, forecasting, finance, and macroeconomics, and he has served on the editorial boards of leading journals including Econometrica, Review of Economics and Statistics, International Economic Review, Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, and Journal of Applied Econometrics. He is a faculty research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, as well as an elected Fellow of the Econometric Society, the American Statistical Association, and the International Institute of Forecasters. He has received Sloan, Guggenheim, and Humboldt fellowships. Diebold is codirector of the Wharton Financial Institutions Center and President of the Society for Financial Econometrics. From 1986 to 1989, he served as an economist under both Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. In 2007-08 he, served as an executive director of Morgan Stanley Investment Management, and in 2012-13 he served as chairman of the Federal Reserve System's Model Validation Council.
Carolyn L. Evans is head economist and senior data scientist at Intel Corporation. Prior to joining Intel, Evans held the positions of associate professor of economics at Santa Clara University, senior economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, senior staff economist for international trade on the President's Council of Economic Advisers, and economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. She has published articles and books in the areas of international trade, political economy, global macroeconomics, and corporate finance. Evans is a member of the Conference of Business Economists, the Harvard University Discussion Group of Industrial Economists, the National Association for Business Economics (NABE), and the American Economic Association. She serves on the board of directors of NABE and the advisory board for the MS degree in business analytics at Santa Clara University. From Harvard University, Evans earned a PhD and master's degree in economics and a bachelor's degree in East Asian languages and civilizations. She also holds an MSc from the London School of Economics.
Charles L. Evans has served as president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago since September 2007. In that capacity, he serves on the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), the Federal Reserve System's monetary policymaking body. Before becoming president in September of 2007, Evans served as director of research and senior vice president, supervising the Bank's research on monetary policy, banking, financial markets, and regional economic conditions. His own research has focused on measuring the effects of monetary policy on U.S. economic activity, inflation, and financial market prices and has been published in peer-reviewed journals. Evans is active in the civic community. He is a trustee at Rush University Medical Center, a director of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a governing board member of Econ Illinois, a member of the Economic Club of Chicago board of directors, and a member of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago and Civic Consulting Alliance Board. Evans has taught at the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan, and the University of South Carolina. He received a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Virginia and a doctorate in economics from Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
Marie Gooding is first vice president and chief operating officer of the Atlanta Fed, a position she assumed in March 2011. She oversees the day-to-day operations of the Atlanta Fed, including all operating and support activities at the corporate headquarters in Atlanta and at the branch offices in Birmingham, Jacksonville, Miami, Nashville, and New Orleans. She also is vice chairman of the Bank's Management Committee and a member of the Discount Committee that reviews District discount window lending. Gooding is backup to the president in the execution of his monetary policy responsibilities. Besides her Atlanta Fed responsibilities, Gooding is the retail payments product director for the Federal Reserve System. Her national responsibilities in this area include managing and directing check collection and automated clearinghouse products and services provided by the Federal Reserve System. She is also a member of the Conference of First Vice Presidents, involved in various projects and initiatives to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the Federal Reserve's System-wide operations. Gooding holds a bachelor of science degree in secondary math education from Old Dominion University. She has also completed Duke University's Advanced Management Program and the Harvard Advanced Management Program.
Patrick T. Harker took office on July 1, 2015, as the 11th president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. In this role, Harker participates on the Federal Open Market Committee, which formulates the nation's monetary policy. Before taking office at the Philadelphia Fed, Harker served as the 26th president of the University of Delaware. He was also a professor of business administration at the university's Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics and a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the College of Engineering. In 2012, Harker was named a fellow of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences and a charter fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. He was also named a White House fellow by President George H. W. Bush in 1991 and served as a special assistant to FBI director William S. Sessions from 1991 to 1992. Harker has a PhD in civil and urban engineering, an MA in economics, and an MSE and BSE in civil engineering, all from the University of Pennsylvania.
Robert S. Kaplan has served as president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas since September 8, 2015. Kaplan was previously the Martin Marshall Professor of Management Practice and a senior associate dean at Harvard Business School. He is the author of several books, including What You Really Need to Lead: The Power of Thinking and Acting Like an Owner, What You're Really Meant to Do: A Road Map for Reaching Your Unique Potential, and What to Ask the Person in the Mirror: Critical Questions for Becoming a More Effective Leader and Reaching Your Potential. Prior to joining Harvard in 2006, Kaplan was vice chairman of the Goldman Sachs Group, with global responsibility for the firm's investment banking and investment management divisions. Previously, he served as global cohead of the investment banking division. During his 23-year career at Goldman Sachs, Kaplan served in other capacities, including head of the corporate finance department, head of Asia-Pacific investment banking, and head of the high-yield department in investment banking. He serves as chairman of Project A.L.S. and cochairman of the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, a global venture philanthropy firm that invests in developing nonprofit enterprises dedicated to addressing social issues. He is also a board member of Harvard Medical School. Kaplan received a bachelor of science degree in business administration from the University of Kansas and a master's degree in business administration from Harvard Business School.
Andrei Kirilenko is the director of the Centre for Global Finance and Technology, a visiting professor of finance at the Imperial College Business School, and a research fellow in the financial economics program of the Centre for Economic Policy Research. Prior to joining Imperial in August 2015, he was a professor of the practice of finance at MIT Sloan and codirector of the MIT Center for Finance and Policy. Prior to MIT, Kirilenko was chief economist of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) between December 2010 and December 2012. In 2010, Kirilenko was the recipient of the CFTC Chairman's Award for Excellence, its highest honor. Kirilenko's scholarly work focuses on the intersection of finance, technology, and regulation and has appeared in a number of peer-refereed journals and received multiple best-paper awards. Kirilenko received his PhD in economics from the University of Pennsylvania.
Bill Lang is managing director of Promontory Financial Group, an IBM company. Lang is an authority on quantitative risk analysis, model validation, financial risk management, capital planning, and bank regulation. Prior to joining Promontory, Lang served as executive vice president of the Philadelphia Fed, where he led its supervision of banking organizations and oversaw discount window lending. In 2010–11, Bill was assigned to the Federal Reserve Board to serve as head of risk and cochair the risk committee for systemically important banks. During that time, he prepared numerous briefings for Federal Reserve governors and wrote memos on bank supervisory issues for the Federal Open Market Committee. Lang created and led the quantitative group responsible for supervisory stress models and Basel II model assessments for the retail credit portfolio. He was also a major contributor to the Federal Reserve Board's Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review, including leading the development and implementation of the review's model-validation program. Lang has published numerous articles in leading academic journals including the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Monetary Economics, the Journal of Financial Intermediation, and the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking. He is a fellow of the Wharton Financial Institutions Center. Lang received his PhD from Yale University and his bachelor's degree from the City College of New York.
Gideon Mann is the head of data science at Bloomberg L.P., where he guides the strategic direction for machine learning, natural language processing, and search across the company. He is part of the leadership team for the office of the chief technology officer. Mann is active on issues related to the ethics of data science and also serves as a founding member of the Data for Good Exchange (an annual conference on data science applications for social good) and the Shift Commission on Work, Workers, and Technology. Before joining Bloomberg in 2014, Mann worked at Google Research. Mann graduated from Brown University and received a PhD from The Johns Hopkins University.
Rishi Narang is the founding principal of T2AM and manages its investment activities. He began his career as a global investment strategist for Citibank Alternative Investment in 1996. In 1999, he cofounded Tradeworx Inc., a quantitative hedge fund manager, acting as its president until his departure in 2002. For three years, Narang was the co–portfolio manager and a managing director at Santa Barbara Alpha Strategies before founding T2AM in 2005. He is the author of Inside the Black Box: A Simple Guide to Quantitative and High-Frequency Trading. Narang organizes the Inside the Black Box quantitative investing conference series. He is on the board of directors of Village Health Works and is an adviser to DARPA, Planet Labs, McKinley Capital, and Equeum. Narang has a degree in economics from the University of California at Berkeley.
Christina Qi is cofounder and partner at Domeyard LP, a hedge fund known for its focus on high-frequency trading. Qi has experience in investment management, sales and trading, derivatives operations, and technology across Goldman Sachs, UBS Securities, Zions Bank, and MIT Lincoln Labs. She is a visiting lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a case study protagonist at Harvard Business School. Qi serves on the board of the MIT Sloan Boston Alumni Association, the 100 Women in Finance U.S. Non-Profit Boards Committee, and the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst Scholarship Committee. Qi and her Domeyard cofounders have been named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 and Boston Business Journal 40 Under 40 lists. She earned a degree in management science from MIT.
Vincent Reinhart is a managing director and chief economist and macro strategist for BNY Mellon Asset Management North America. He is responsible for developing views on the global economy and making relative value recommendations among global bond markets, currencies, and sectors. Previously, he was chief U.S. economist and managing director at Morgan Stanley. For the prior four years, he was a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Reinhart worked at the Federal Reserve for 24 years, most recently as director of the Division of Monetary Affairs and secretary and economist of the Federal Open Market Committee. His responsibilities at the Federal Reserve included directing research and analysis of monetary policy strategies and the conduct of policy through open market operations, discount window lending, and reserve requirements. He was the principal liaison with the domestic desk at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and was responsible for preparing a document outlining policy alternatives for each meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). His earlier experience in the Federal Reserve System included a two-year stint as deputy director in the Division of International Finance and associate economist of the FOMC and five years spent at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in a variety of capacities in both the domestic and international research departments. His academic publications primarily concern the conduct of policy and issues related to the monetary transmission mechanism as well as an analysis of alternative auction techniques and Treasury debt management. After undergraduate training at Fordham University, he received graduate degrees in economics from Columbia University.
Matthew U. Scherer is an attorney and legal scholar who writes and speaks on the intersection of law and artificial intelligence. He is an associate with the international labor and employment law firm Littler Mendelson P.C., where he is a member of the Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and Automation practice group. Scherer previously served for more than two years as an assistant prosecuting attorney in Pontiac, Michigan. He has also completed three judicial clerkships, covering both state and federal courts and courts at the trial court, intermediate appellate court, and Supreme Court levels. He is a magna cum laude graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center. Scherer is the author of several articles discussing the legal implications of artificial intelligence, including Regulating Artificial Intelligence Systems: Risks, Challenges, Competencies, and Strategies, and he maintains a blog discussing the legal implications of artificial intelligence at LawAndAI.com.
John Schindler is an associate director in the Division of Financial Stability at the Federal Reserve Board. He has published papers on a range of topics including measuring financial conditions, crisis modeling, and China. He founded the Financial Stability Board's Financial Innovation Network in 2012 and chaired the group until 2018. From 2008 to 2009, he took leave from the Fed to serve as the chief international economist at the Treasury Department. Schindler has been a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University since 2005 and has spent time as a visiting professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and a visiting scholar at the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin American and the Caribbean. He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania.
Stacey Schreft is deputy director for research and analysis for the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Financial Research. She oversees a team of financial stability researchers and analysts who produce research and policy analysis to support the Financial Stability Oversight Council. Her work has focused on financial stability, macroeconomics, and risk management. As chief economist for Scout Investments, she provided strategic analysis of financial markets and the global economy and established an investment risk management and monitoring discipline for the firm's investment strategies. Previously, as director of investment strategy at the Mutual Fund Store, she was responsible for the firm's asset allocation models, manager due diligence, performance analysis, and economic insight. Before that, Schreft was as an officer and economist at the Federal Reserve Banks of Kansas City and Richmond. Schreft served on the economics department faculty at Michigan State University and was a visiting finance professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She has a doctorate in economics from the University of Minnesota and a bachelor's degree in economics from Smith College.
Gregory Scopino is an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center (GULC). His research focuses on the extent to which existing laws and regulations governing financial markets and financial institutions will need to adapt to the spread of automation and technological innovations. Scopino has had six articles accepted for publication in U.S. law journals. He currently is completing his book, Algo Bots and the Law: The Impact of Technology and Innovation on the Regulation of Futures and Other Derivatives, which is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. Scopino has taught a seminar on global derivatives law and regulatory policy at GULC since 2017. From 2012 to 2015, he taught a similar course at Cornell Law School. Since 2012, Scopino has also been a special counsel with the Division of Swap Dealer and Intermediary Oversight (DSIO) at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Before moving to DSIO, Scopino was a trial attorney in the CFTC's Division of Enforcement, where he investigated and litigated cases involving fraud, market manipulation, and regulatory violations. Scopino worked at two private law firms in New York City from 2006 to 2010 after having spent a year clerking for a federal district court judge. Scopino has a bachelor's degree in journalism and sociology from Pennsylvania State University and a law degree from Cornell Law School.
Chester Spatt is the Pamela R. and Kenneth B. Dunn Professor of Finance at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University. He served as chief economist of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and director of its Office of Economic Analysis from July 2004 through July 2007. He currently is Golub Distinguished Visiting Professor of Finance and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Golub Center for Financial Policy at MIT's Sloan School of Management. His coauthored 2004 paper on asset location in the Journal of Finance won TIAA-CREF's Paul Samuelson Award for the Best Publication on Lifelong Financial Security. He has served as executive editor and one of the founding editors of the Review of Financial Studies, president and member of the founding committee of the Society for Financial Studies, and president of the Western Finance Association. He is currently a member of the Systemic Risk Council and the Financial Economists Roundtable, research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, senior economic adviser to Kalorama Partners, and fellow of the TIAA–CREF Institute. He has served as a member of the Federal Reserve's Model Validation Council, the advisory committee of the Office of Financial Research, and the equity market structure advisory committee of the SEC. He earned his PhD in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and his undergraduate degree from Princeton University.
Chad Syverson is the Eli B. and Harriet B. Williams Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. His research spans several topics, with a particular focus on the interactions of firm structure, market structure, and productivity. His research has been published in several top journals and has earned multiple National Science Foundation Awards. He also coauthored (with Austan Goolsbee and Steve Levitt) an intermediate-level text, Microeconomics. Syverson serves as an editor of the RAND Journal of Economics. He is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and recently served on National Academies committees and as the board chair of the Chicago Census Research Data Center. Prior to his appointment at the University of Chicago, Syverson was a mechanical engineer co-op for Loral Defense Systems and Unisys Corporation. Syverson has two bachelor's degrees from the University of North Dakota, one in economics and one in mechanical engineering. He earned his PhD in economics from the University of Maryland.
Paula Tkac is a senior vice president and associate director of research at the Atlanta Fed. She leads the financial markets and micro/macro research economics teams, serves as a policy adviser, and provides strategic direction for the research division. Tkac 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. In addition to publishing in academic journals, Tkac frequently speaks to academic and practitioner groups and has appeared on C-SPAN and as an op-ed writer in the Wall Street Journal. Before she joined the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta in 2000, Tkac was on the faculty of the finance department at the University of Notre Dame. Tkac earned her bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in economics from the University of Chicago.
Larry Wall is executive director of the Atlanta Fed's Center for Financial Innovation and Stability (CenFIS), a research center created to improve knowledge of financial innovation and financial stability and the connection between the two. Wall joined the financial structure team of the Bank's research department in 1982 and was promoted to executive director of the CenFIS in 2013. Wall leads CenFIS's activities, including its newsletter, Notes from the Vault, and conferences. He also provides policy advice. A certified public accountant, Wall is on the editorial boards of the Financial Review, Journal of Financial Research, Journal of Financial Services Research, Journal of Financial Stability, and Review of Financial Economics. Wall is also on the Academic Advisory Panel for the International Association of Deposit Insurers. He is a past president and chairman of the trustees of the Eastern Finance Association. Wall has also been an adjunct faculty member of Emory University and the Georgia Institute of Technology. He earned a bachelor's degree in business administration from the University of North Dakota and a PhD in business from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.