Banner for the 2020 Financial Markets Conference on May 17, 2020

May 17–19, 2020
Amelia Island, Florida

Speaker Biographies

Keynote Speakers

Photo of Mark A. CalabriaMark A. Calabria is the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. He has served as Chief Economist to Vice President Pence since February 2017. Prior to his work in the White House, he was director of financial regulation studies at the Cato Institute. Before joining Cato in 2009, he spent six years as a member of the senior professional staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs where he handled issues related to housing, mortgage finance, economics, banking and insurance for Ranking Member Richard Shelby (R-AL). Prior to his service on Capitol Hill, Calabria served as deputy assistant secretary for regulatory affairs at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and also held a variety of positions at Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies, the National Association of Home Builders, and the National Association of Realtors. Dr. Calabria has also been a research associate with the U.S. Census Bureau's Center for Economic Studies. He has extensive experience evaluating the impacts of legislative and regulatory proposals on financial and real estate markets. He holds a doctorate in economics from George Mason University.


Photo of Richard ClaridaRichard H. Clarida began a four-year term as vice chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on September 17, 2018, and took office as a board member to fill an unexpired term ending January 31, 2022. Prior to his appointment to the Board, Clarida served as the C. Lowell Harriss Professor of Economics and International Affairs at Columbia University, where he taught from 1988 to 2018. From 1997 until 2001, Clarida served as chairman of the department of economics at Columbia University. In addition to his academic experience, Clarida served as the assistant of the U.S. Department of the Treasury for Economic Policy from February 2002 until May 2003. In that position, he served as chief economic adviser to Treasury secretaries Paul H. O'Neill and John W. Snow. He was awarded the Treasury Medal in recognition of his service. Clarida also served on the Council of Economic Advisers under President Reagan. From 2006 to 2018, he served as global strategic advisor with PIMCO and was promoted to managing director in 2015. Clarida is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and, from 1983 to 2018, was a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). From 2004 to 2018, he served as coeditor of the NBER International Macroeconomics Annual. Clarida received a BS in economics from the University of Illinois with Bronze Tablet honors and an MA and PhD in economics from Harvard University.

Photo of Lawrence H. SummersLawrence H. Summers is the Charles W. Eliot University Professor and the president emeritus of Harvard University. During the past two decades, he has served in a series of senior policy positions in Washington, DC, including secretary of the Treasury for President Clinton, director of the National Economic Council for President Obama and vice president of development economics and chief economist of the World Bank. In 1983, he became one of the youngest individuals in recent history to be named as a tenured member of the Harvard University faculty. In 1987, Summers became the first social scientist ever to receive the annual Alan T. Waterman Award of the National Science Foundation, and in 1993 he was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal, given every two years to the outstanding American economist under the age of 40. Besides being the Charles W. Eliot University Professor at Harvard, he is the Weil Director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business & Government at Harvard's Kennedy School. He received a bachelor of science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975 and a PhD from Harvard in 1982.

 

Other Speaker Biographies

Ulrich Bindseil is director general of market infrastructure and payments at the European Central Bank (ECB). Before his current role, he held several positions at the ECB. Bindseil started working in the field of central banking in 1994 in the economics department of the Deutsche Bundesbank. He joined the European Monetary Institute in 1997 to work on the preparation of the ECB's liquidity management. Bindseil studied economics at the University of Saarbrücken.

Willem Buiter is an independent economic consultant and speaker. He is currently a visiting professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University and an adjunct senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations. He was global chief economist at Citigroup from 2010 to 2018 and a special economic adviser at Citigroup from 2018 to 2019. Previously, he was chief economist and special counsellor to the president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and an original member of the monetary policy committee of the Bank of England. He was the Juan T. Trippe Professor of International Economics at Yale University and has also held professorships at the London School of Economics and Cambridge University. He is the author of 78 refereed articles in professional journals and seven books.

Christian Catalini is cocreator of Libra and head economist at Calibra from Facebook. He is one of the principal investigators of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Digital Currencies Research Study, which gave access to all MIT undergraduate students to Bitcoin in the fall of 2014. He is also part of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy and a faculty adviser at the Digital Currency Initiative. Since 2018, he has been a faculty research fellow in the Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His work has been featured in Nature, Science, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Wired, NPR, Forbes, Bloomberg, TechCrunch, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, and the Washington Post. He has presented his research at a variety of institutions, including Harvard University, MIT, Yale University, the London Business School, New York University, Stanford University, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, the U.S. Treasury, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the World Bank, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the University of California, Berkeley. He holds a PhD from the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management and a master's degree, summa cum laude, in economics and management of new technologies from Bocconi University, Milan.

Julia Coronado is the president and founder of MacroPolicy Perspectives. She is a clinical associate professor of finance at the University of Texas and blogs for Rutgers Business School. She has more than a decade of experience as a financial market economist, including serving as chief economist for Graham Capital Management and BNP Paribas and as a senior economist at Barclays Capital. Coronado worked for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington, DC for eight years, where she regularly briefed the board and contributed to the Federal Open Market Committee's forecasts. She has published a number of articles on issues related to pension finances, social security, and retirement saving adequacy and behavior. She is a member of the Economic Advisory Panel of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and is on the boards of directors of the National Association of Business Economists and Robert Half International. Coronado also sits on the Economic Studies Council at the Brookings Institution and serves on the advisory boards of the Pension Research Council at the Wharton School and the Cleveland Fed's Center for Inflation Research. Coronado earned a PhD in economics from the University of Texas.

Douglas Elliott is a partner at Oliver Wyman in New York, where he focuses on financial regulation and associated public policy issues and their implications for the financial sector. He analyzes a wide range of issues and has published papers on such diverse topics as financial institutions in an age of populism, data rights in finance, and tackling global market fragmentation in banking. He has also written extensively on the impacts of capital and liquidity requirements. Recently, he addressed the finance ministers and central bank governors of the 28 European Union member states. Prior to joining the firm, he was a fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution. He primarily analyzed financial institutions and markets and their regulation, along with extensive analysis of the euro crisis. He has twice been a visiting scholar at the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Elliott also worked as a consultant for the IMF, the World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank. Prior to Brookings, he was a financial institutions investment banker for two decades, principally at J.P. Morgan. He has testified multiple times before both houses of Congress, participated in numerous speaking engagements, and appeared in the major media outlets. Elliott graduated from Harvard College with an AB in sociology in 1981. In 1984, he graduated from Duke University with a master's degree in computer science.

Jon Frost is a senior economist with the innovation and the digital economy unit of the Monetary and Economic Department at the Bank for International Settlements. He is also a research affiliate of the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance at the University of Cambridge. Frost conducts policy-oriented research on fintech and digital innovation. He has written on fintech credit, big tech in finance, and technology and inequality. Previously, he worked at the Financial Stability Board, Netherlands Bank, VU University in Amsterdam, and the private sector in Germany. Frost received a PhD in economics from the University of Groningen.

Joseph Gagnon is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Previously, he was visiting associate director, Division of Monetary Affairs, at the Federal Reserve Board. He served at the Federal Reserve Board as associate director, Division of International Finance, and senior economist. He has also served at the Treasury Department and taught at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. He is author of Flexible Exchange Rates for a Stable World Economy and The Global Outlook for Government Debt over the Next 25 years: Implications for the Economy and Public Policy and coauthor of Currency Conflict and Trade Policy: A New Strategy for the United States. He has published numerous articles in economics journals, including the Journal of International Economics, the Journal of Monetary Economics, the Review of International Economics, and the Journal of International Money and Finance. He has also contributed to several edited volumes. He received a bachelor's degree from Harvard University and a PhD in economics from Stanford University.

Esther George is president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City and leads a workforce of close to 2,000 employees in Kansas City and its branch offices in Omaha, Denver, and Oklahoma City. The Kansas City Fed is responsible for conducting monetary policy, providing financial services to depository institutions and the U.S. Treasury, and supervising nearly 1,000 banking organizations within the Tenth Federal Reserve District, a seven-state region that includes western Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Colorado, Wyoming and northern New Mexico. As the region's representative on the Federal Open Market Committee in Washington, George participates in monetary policy deliberations and provides a perspective based on three decades of experience as a banking supervisor. Her policy views are informed by regular contacts with the region's business leaders, workers, financial institutions, and community leaders. George also leads the development of the FedNow Service, which will provide financial institutions with the ability to settle payments in real time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In addition, she hosts the annual Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium in Wyoming, which brings together international central bankers, researchers, and policymakers to discuss issues affecting the global economy.

Charles Kahn is professor emeritus at the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois. He is a specialist in the economics of information and uncertainty, and his research focuses on the applications of the theory of contracts and incentives to banking and financial intermediation. His current projects include an examination of arrangements for payment systems, including clearing houses, wire transfers, and electronic money. He has been a research fellow at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, a visiting scholar at the Bank of Canada, and a consultant for the Chicago Fed, the Bank of England, and the European Central Bank. He previously chaired the finance department at the University of Illinois and was a fellow at the Bank of England, Cambridge University, and the Australian National University. He holds a PhD in economics from Harvard University.

Robert Steven Kaplan has served as the 13th president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas since September 8, 2015. He represents the Eleventh Federal Reserve District on the Federal Open Market Committee in the formulation of U.S. monetary policy and oversees the 1,200 employees of the Dallas Fed. 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 University in 2006, Kaplan was vice chairman of the Goldman Sachs Group Inc. with global responsibility for the firm's investment banking and investment management divisions. He became a partner in 1990 and served as cochairman of the firm's Partnership Committee. He was also a member of the Management Committee. Following his 23-year career at Goldman Sachs, Kaplan became a senior director of the firm. 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 previously served on the boards of State Street Corporation, Harvard Management Company, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Heidrick & Struggles International Inc. He was also a trustee of the Ford Foundation, cofounding board chair of the TEAK Fellowship, cofounder and chairman of Indaba Capital Management, and chairman of the Investment Advisory Committee at Google. Kaplan was appointed by the governor of Kansas as a member of the Kansas Health Policy Authority Board. 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.

Dennis M. Kelleher is the president, chief executive officer, and cofounder of Better Markets Inc., an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization created in 2010 in response to the 2008 financial crash and the passage of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law. Better Markets promotes the economic security, opportunity, and prosperity of the American people by being a counterweight to the too-big-to-fail financial firms throughout the policymaking and rulemaking processes. Kelleher has been featured in the Frontline documentary "Money, Power and Wall Street" and the book Tailspin: The People and Forces Behind America's Fifty-Year Fall—and Those Fighting to Reverse It. Kelleher joined Better Markets after decades of experience in the public, private, political, charitable, and nonprofit sectors. He has held several senior staff positions in the U.S. Senate, most recently as the chief counsel and senior leadership adviser to the chairman of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee. Previously, he was a deputy staff director and general counsel to a Senate committee as well as a legislative director for a senior member of the Senate. Prior to his Senate service, Kelleher was a litigation partner with the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. He also served four years of active duty enlisted service in the Air Force prior to his graduation from Brandeis University and Harvard Law School.

Arvind Krishnamurthy is the John S. Osterweis Professor of Finance at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Krishnamurthy studies finance, macroeconomics, and monetary policy. He has studied the causes and consequences of liquidity crises in emerging markets and developed economies and the role of government policy in stabilizing crises. Recently, he has been examining the importance of U.S. Treasury bonds and the dollar in the international monetary system. He has published numerous journal articles and received awards for his research, including the Smith Breeden Prize for best paper published in the Journal of Finance. Krishnamurthy's research on financial crises and monetary policy has received national media coverage and been cited by central banks around the world. He was formerly an associate editor at the Journal of Finance and the American Economics Journals-Macroeconomics and is associate editor at the American Economic Review. He did his undergraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania and his doctoral work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Loretta J. Mester is president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and an adjunct professor of finance at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. As president of the Cleveland Fed, she serves on the Federal Open Market Committee, the nation's monetary policymaking body, and oversees a staff of 1,000 employees in Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh. She has more than thirty years of experience in the Federal Reserve System. Before becoming president of the Cleveland Fed in 2014, she was executive vice president and director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, where began her career as an economist. She has taught in the PhD program at New York University and the undergraduate and MBA programs at Wharton. Her research focuses on financial intermediation and has been widely published in academic journals. She is a coeditor of the Journal of Financial Services Research, and an associate editor of several other academic journals. She received a bachelor's degree in mathematics and economics from Barnard College of Columbia University and a master's degree and PhD in economics from Princeton University, where she held a National Science Foundation Fellowship.

Simon Potter has been an independent consultant since September 2019. His current research focuses on central bank operations, monetary policy, digital currencies, reference rates, the role of the dollar, and economic forecasting. Prior to his current position, he was head of the markets group and system open market account manager at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In this role, he oversaw the implementation of domestic open market and foreign exchange trading operations on behalf of the Federal Open Market Committee, the execution of fiscal agent support for the U.S. Treasury, the provision of account services to foreign and international monetary authorities, and the administration and production of reference interest rates for U.S. money markets. He started his career at the New York Fed in June 1998 and served as director of economic research and cohead of the research and statistics group at the New York Fed prior to becoming head of the markets group in June 2012, where he was responsible for monetary policy advice. He played a prominent role in the Federal Reserve's financial stability efforts, including by contributing to the design of the 2009 U.S. bank stress tests, as a member of the international macroeconomic assessment group that supported the Basel Committee's work to strengthen bank capital standards and, most recently, as chair of the Global Foreign Exchange Committee. In addition, he worked for the Financial Stability Oversight Council in 2011 to produce its first annual report. Prior to working at the New York Fed, he was an assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has also taught at Johns Hopkins University, New York University, and Princeton University.

René M. Stulz is the Everett D. Reese Chair of Banking and Monetary Economics and the director of the Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics at The Ohio State University. He was awarded a Marvin Bower Fellowship from the Harvard Business School, a Doctorat Honoris Causa from the University of Neuchâtel, and the Risk Manager of the Year Award from the Global Association of Risk Professionals. He is a past president of the American Finance Association and the Western Finance Association and a fellow of the American Finance Association, the European Corporate Governance Institute, the Financial Management Association, and the Wharton Financial Institutions Center. Stulz was the editor of the Journal of Finance and coeditor of the Journal of Financial Economics. He is on the editorial board of more than ten academic and practitioner journals. Stulz is a member of the Asset Pricing and Corporate Finance Programs and the director of the Risk of Financial Institutions Group of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is the author of Risk Management and Derivatives and coauthor of the Squam Lake Report: Fixing the Financial System. He has edited several books, including two volumes of the Handbook of the Economics of Finance. He has consulted for financial institutions as well as for nonfinancial firms, law firms, the New York Stock Exchange, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. He is a director of Banque Bonhote and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Global Association of Risk Professionals.

Philip Turner is a visiting lecturer at University of Basel. He is also visitor at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research in London. Until October 2016, he was deputy head of the Monetary and Economic Department and a member of senior management of the Bank for International Settlements, which he joined in 1989. Between 1976 and 1989, Turner held various positions, including head of division in the economics department at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris. In 1985–86, he was a visiting scholar at the Bank of Japan's Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies in Tokyo. He was a teaching fellow at Harvard University. He read economics at Churchill College, Cambridge, and has a PhD from Harvard University.

Warren Weber was senior research officer at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, a position he held for 27 years until his retirement in 2012. Prior to that, he held teaching positions at several universities. He is a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and is affiliated with the Institute of Decentralized Economics. His research interests are payments systems; digital currencies, particularly stablecoins; monetary theory; and U.S. banking history. He holds a PhD from Carnegie Mellon University.

Stephen Williamson is the Stephen A. Jarislowsky Chair in central banking at the University of Western Ontario and publishes the New Monetarist Economics blog. He was previously a consulting economist in the Research Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond from 1998 to 2014. His research focuses on financial economics, monetary economics, and macroeconomics. His research has been published in numerous academic journals including the Journal of Monetary Economics, the American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, and the Journal of Economic Theory.