Navneet Arora – PhD, Managing Director
BlackRock

Navneet Arora, PhD, Managing Director, is the Global Head of Credit Research for BlackRock's Model Based Fixed Income Portfolio Management Group.

Dr. Arora's service with the firm dates back to 2006, including his years with Barclays Global Investors (BGI), which merged with BlackRock in 2009. At BGI, he served as the Head of Credit Research. Prior to joining BGI, Dr. Arora served as a Senior Director of Research at Moody's KMV where he was responsible for public firm credit risk modeling and research, including measurement of default and recovery risk and valuation of loans, bonds and credit default swaps. In addition, he has authored several papers that have been published in various practitioner journals.

Dr. Arora earned a B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in 1991, an MBA in finance from the Indian Institute of Management in 1995, and a PhD in finance from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2001.

Linda Back – Vice President, Wholesale Loan Services
Wells Fargo Bank

John Baer – Senior Director, Product Management
Moody's Analytics

John Baer is a Product Manager at Moody's Analytics, responsible for Credit Assessment and Origination product offerings. John’s team focuses on the delivery of dual risk rating and limits management solutions that assist clients worldwide to efficiently and effectively manage the origination of new loans as well as monitor the performance of existing loans. John joined Moody's in 2004 after working nine years with Ernst & Young. There John advised clients regarding accounting standard application and performed merger and acquisition due diligence. John worked with commercial lenders on behalf of corporate and private equity clients to understand the risk of contemplated transactions. John is currently based in San Francisco, is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, and holds a certificate of Certified Public Accountant.

Jim Bilek – Associate Director, RiskAnalyst Product Manger
Moody’s Analytics

Jim Bilek is a member of the Credit Assessment and Origination product team at Moody’s Analytics and manages the RiskAnalyst platform. In his over nine years at Moody’s Analytics, Jim has been involved in all aspects of the RiskAnalyst product, from design, development, marketing, and product strategy. He has specialized in Commercial Real Estate solutions for the platform, and uses his experience to assist clients in getting the most out of their use of Moody’s Analytics software products. Jim Bilek is currently based in San Francisco and is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame.

Jun Chen – Senior Director
Moody’s Analytics

Jun Chen joined Moody’s in 2008 as a Senior Director and is currently leading the research efforts in expanding credit risk analytics to commercial real estate. He has many years of experience in the real estate finance industry. Previously, he was a Co-Director of Debt Research at CB Richard Ellis Torto Wheaton Research, and before that, Director of Research and Analytics at Property & Portfolio Research. Jun was instrumental at these places in delivering cutting-edge market research and risk analytics consulting to a variety of prominent commercial real estate market participants. His other professional experience includes working at IndyMac Bank and Cornerstone Research. He also was a faculty member at Shanghai Jiaotong University before coming to the U.S. He has published widely in academic and professional journals and conferences. Jun obtained his Ph.D. with a specialty in real estate finance and urban economics from the University of Southern California. His Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees are both from Tongji University.

Chris Chung, Financial Analyst – Credit and Receivables Management
Chevron Services Company

Chris is currently a financial/credit analyst supporting Chevron’s U.S. Downstream Marketing operations.  In this role, he’s worked extensively on credit scoring protocols and tools to quantify credit exposure and risk scores associated with various business segments within Chevron.  During his 20+ years with credit and risk management, he’s held positions in Energy Credit and Risk Control, Credit/Risk Research and Analysis, Commercial Lending and Credit Auditing.

Chris received his BS in Economics from SUNY at Albany and his MBA with a concentration in Finance from San Francisco State University.

Dr. Ashish Das – Managing Director, Moody’s Research Labs
Moody’s Analytics

Benoit Drebet – Director, Product Management
Moody’s Analytics

Benoit Drebet is a Product Manager at Moody's Analytics, member of the Credit Assessment and Origination product team. Benoit joined Fermat Research & Development in 2005 where he worked on the core software platform and leaded the reporting and workflow initiatives. Following the acquisition of Fermat by Moody’s in 2008, he now manages the Origination and Limits products from Singapore. Prior to joining Moody's, Benoit specialized in web technologies in the US and France and holds a master's degree in computer science from ENSIMAG (France).

Mathieu Dubard – Associate Director, Product Manager
Moody’s Analytics

Now an associate director in the Product Management Group of Moody’s Analytics, Mathieu Dubard joined the Research & Development department of Fermat in 2006 after completing a master’s degree in applied mathematics and quantitative finance. Initially in charge of designing scenario analysis capabilities for Fermat’s leading regulatory capital and performance computation solutions, he also participated in various business development and sales efforts all over the Asia region.

Following the acquisition of Fermat by Moody’s in 2008, he was heading stress-testing efforts on legacy Moody’s Fermat products, while assisting large customers with their implementation projects.
Since 2009, as a member of the product management team, he has been leading the design and the promotion of a new Scenario Analysis platform, which will ultimately bridge Moody’s Analytics solutions to build consistent scenarios, defined from macroeconomic data to holistic business and performance forecasts.

Darrell Duffie – Dean Witter Distinguished Professor in Finance
Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business

Darrell Duffie, is a member of the Audit and Governance and Compensation Committees of the Board of Directors. Dr. Duffie is the Dean Witter Distinguished Professor in Finance at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business, and has been a member of the finance faculty at Stanford since 1984. He has authored numerous books and research articles on security markets, derivatives, credit risk management and other topics in finance and related fields. Dr. Duffie is a member of The Federal Reserve Bank of New York Financial Advisory Roundtable, a Fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and is the President-elect of the American Finance Association. Dr. Duffie is also a director of iShares, a family of Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) from Barclays Global Investors.

Robert Dutcher – Senior Director of Marketing and Communications, Software Division
Moody’s Analytics

Robert Dutcher, Senior Director of Marketing and Communications, Moody’s Analytics Software Division
Robert Dutcher heads global marketing for the software division of Moody’s Analytics. Robert has over 20 years of experience in software and technology companies covering business intelligence, analytics, data warehousing, and financial products. Over the years, Robert has held a variety of senior roles in marketing and product management for some of the fastest growing and most successful technology companies in the world. Robert holds a BS in Physics and MS in Engineering.

Douglas Dwyer – Managing Director, Single Obligor Research Group
Moody’s Analytics

Douglas Dwyer, Managing Director, heads the Single Obligor Research Group at Moody's KMV. This group focuses on measuring the credit risk for corporations and financial institutions worldwide. The group's models are used by banks, asset managers, insurance companies, accounting firms and corporations to measure risk for a wide variety of purposes. The group utilizes different methodologies to measure the risk of different types of firms depending on the information available. Recent research includes deriving a physical default probability from CDS spreads, updating our LGD model and extending coverage of RiskCalc models to include private firms in emerging markets such as China and Russia. Prior to working at Moody's KMV, Dr. Dwyer was a Principal at William M. Mercer, Inc., in their Human Capital Strategy practice. Dr. Dwyer earned a Ph.D. in Economics at Columbia University and a B.A. in Economics from Oberlin College. He has published articles in peer reviewed academic journals.

Eric Ebel – Senior Director, Product Management
Moody’s Analytics

Eric Ebel is a Senior Director in the Product Management Group of Moody’s Analytics.
Eric joined the Research & Development department of Fermat in 2003 where he leaded the development of the regulatory capital and regulatory reporting products.
Following the acquisition of Fermat by Moody’s in 2008, he is now responsible for the Enterprise Risk Management suite, which includes areas such as the core software platform, the Risk Data Warehouse, scenario analysis and performance management capabilities but also the integration of the different software products and analytics within the suite.

Prior to joining Moody’s, Eric was part of the Altran consulting group in Spain for several years.
He completed his engineering degree in INSA Lyon (France) and polytechnic university of Madrid (Spain).

Michael Fadil – Senior Vice President, Corporate Risk Management
SunTrust

Michael joined SunTrust in May 2006 and currently work on special projects for the Chief Risk Officer after working for 4 ½ years as the Head of Risk Analytics, overseeing Wholesale Transaction Modeling, Economic Capital and Portfolio Modeling, Allowance for Loan and Lease Losses, Commercial Portfolio Loss Forecasting and Model Validation.  He has more than 20 years experience in the financial service industry including 13 years at Fleet Financial Group, in addition to working in the credit risk consulting, pension consulting, and asset management industries.  Michael graduated from Dartmouth College and received his MBA in Finance from The Stern School of Business at NYU.

Geoff Fite – Executive Director, Chief Operating Officer
Moody's Analytics

Geoff Fite joined Moody's KMV as Chief Technology Officer in 2005.  Previously, Mr. Fite was Head of Technology and VP of Institutional Investment Consulting at Morningstar Associates (a business unit of Morningstar Inc). Prior to Morningstar Associates, Mr. Fite was COO and CTO of mPower Advisors, a Principal at PricewaterhouseCoopers and CTO of Cogent.

Mr. Fite holds a bachelors degree from the University of California at San Diego and masters degrees from Columbia University.

Sanjay Gupta – Head of Wholesale Credit Analytics
HSBC USA

Sanjay heads up Wholesale Credit Analytics for HSBC USA. He has worked in risk consulting and banking for more than 10 years.  He has worked with a number of financial institutions in US, Europe and Asia on topics of credit analytics, risk rating, Basel II compliance, model validation, risk infrastructure and governance.  He worked with Ernst and Young's Risk Consulting practice for 3.5 years and Bank of America for 3 years. He has also run the risk consulting practice for a boutique firm.  He has an MS in Finance from Carnegie Mellon University and MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, India.|


Peter Heffernan – Senior Vice-President, Global Risk Management
Scotiabank

Currently responsible for Scotiabank's global Basel implementation, non-retail internal risk rating systems and credit portfolio analytics, Peter joined Scotia's Corporate Banking 27 years ago, before moving into Investment Banking to start up the bank's capital markets/swaps business back in the 80's. He was previously VP fixed income underwriting & corporate finance with BNP in Paris and began his career with Bank of Montreal in Canada. After 5 years in London as Scotiabank's SVP, Investment Banking Europe, Peter moved into risk management as SVP Investment Banking Credit and Trading Policy 18 years ago. He has extensive experience in risk management and has worked closely with MKMV and its predecessor, KMV, over the past 10 years in the area of credit portfolio modeling and internal ratings. Peter is a multi-year past-President of the Risk Management Association's Toronto Chapter and is actively involved with other associations working on Basel such as the IIF.

Hans Helbekkmo – Head of Credit Portfolio Risk
Union Bank

Hans Helbekkmo is Head of Credit Portfolio Risk at Union Bank in San Francisco.  Hans is responsible for enterprise wide Economic Capital methodology, as well as heading up the Stress Testing program.  His responsibilities for Basel II include leading the implementation for Retail Banking and ICAAP.
Before joining Union Bank, Hans was a Managing Director in ERisk’s consulting practice, where he provided risk analytics and consulting solutions to financial institutions.  Prior to ERisk, he was a member of Oliver Wyman’s risk practice.  He holds an MBA from INSEAD and a Master’s degree from Cambridge University.

Mr. Helbekkmo has extensive experience advising financial institutions on risk management issues covering all forms of risk, including credit, market, insurance, and operational risk. His work in risk management has taken him around the world, to both of the developed markets of Europe and North America, as well as the emerging economies of Latin America and Asia.


Daryl Hershberger – Director, Risk Management
E*TRADE Financial

Daryl Hershberger has been researching and developing non-maturity deposit models since 2001.  His models have been used for interest rate risk management, budget forecasting, and funds transfer pricing at several US banks. 

He began his model building career in 2000, developing prepayment and default models for consumer and commercial loans at KeyCorp.  Modeling of non-maturity deposits was a natural extension of this work and in 2003 he presented the results of his earlier work on modeling non-maturity deposits at the BAI Treasury Managers Conference.  Daryl is currently with E*TRADE Financial where, since 2005 he has been Director, Risk Management. 

Prior to 2000 Daryl worked as a nuclear engineer for G.E. and Siemens where he was involver in power plant operations and testing, and in reactor core design. 

Daryl holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Nuclear Engineering from Oregon State University, a Master of Engineering Management from Washington State University, and a M.S. in Computational Finance from Carnegie Mellon University.  He has also published academic research on data mining and knowledge discover in large data sets.

Tony Hughes, Ph. D. – Senior Director, Credit Analytics, Economy.com
Moody’s Analytics

Tony Hughes is senior director of Credit Analytics at Moody's Economy.com. His main responsibility involves managing the company's credit analysis consulting projects for global lending institutions. An expert applied econometrician, Dr. Hughes also oversees the development of Moody’s CreditCycle and manages the data and forecasting products CreditForecast.com and CreditForecast.co.uk. His varied research interests have lately focused on problems associated with loss forecasting and stress testing credit portfolios.

Now based in the U.S., Dr. Hughes previously headed the Moody's Economy.com Sydney office, where he was editor of the Asia/Pacific edition of the Dismal Scientist web site and was the company's lead economist in the region. He retains a keen interest in emerging markets and in Asian/Pacific economies.

A former academic, Dr. Hughes held positions at the University of Adelaide, the University of New South Wales, and Vanderbilt University, and has published a number of articles in leading statistics and economics journals. He received his Ph.D. in econometrics from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

Evgueni Ivantsov – Head of Portfolio Risk & Strategy
HSBC

Evgueni Ivantsov is the Head of Portfolio Risk & Strategy at HSBC. In this role, he is responsible for development and implementation of strategic risk solutions for HSBC European credit business. In particular, he is in charge of implementation the Risk Appetite framework, AIRB Basel2 implementation, and portfolio stress testing. As a member of Credit Risk Oversight Committee and European Portfolio Crisis Planning Committee, he is also involved in the decision-making process in strategic risk areas. Prior to this role, Evgueni was the Head of Global Analytics at HSBC responsible for building risk models for Global business, economic capital, credit portfolio analysis and stress testing. Prior to HSBC, Evgueni worked for ING Group as a Senior Manager of Credit Portfolio Group and for BBL (Banque Bruxelles Lambert) as a Senior Rating Analyst. Evgueni was also an adjunct Professor of Economics
at Boston University and an adjunct Professor of Money, Banking at the United Business Institutes (Brussels). Evgueni holds an MBA degree and a Ph.D. in Economics.


Jaidev Iyer - President and Chief Executive Officer
J-Risk Advisors

Jaidev Iyer is a veteran in risk management and capital markets/derivatives areas with significant global experience. He is recognized as a dynamic thought-leader, active public speaker and educator and a strong professional with cutting-edge provocative views and implementation capabilities across best practices in risk management. His opinions and advice have been in particular demand in the aftermath of the global financial/risk crises of 2007-2009.

Jaidev was most recently Managing Director at the Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP), after a 4-year stint on its Board of Trustees. He came to GARP after a 28 year career at Citigroup, where he was the Global Head of Operational Risk for Citi ICG (global institutional capital markets, banking and transactional services). Prior roles included Global Head of Risk for Asset Management, Global Head of Derivatives for Private Banking, Head of Business Risk for the Americas, Head of Treasury for the Middle East, Head of Derivatives Financial Engineering for Asia and Head of Market Risk for North Asia.

Jaidev has a BS in Statistics and Economics from Bombay University and is a CFA Charter Holder. He has completed the Advanced Executive Program (AEP) at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Business and the Behavioral Finance and Strategies for Executive Influence programs at Harvard Kennedy School. Jaidev is based in New York.

Ozgur Kan, Ph.D. – Director, Risk Management Services Group Moody’s Analytics

Ozgur Kan is a Director in the Risk Management Services Group of Moody’s Analytics, based in New York City. In his current role, Dr. Kan leads advisory engagements with clients throughout North America and South America.
Dr. Kan is widely respected as an authority on Probability of Default (PD), Loss Given Default (LGD) /recovery modeling and corporate portfolio stress testing in addition to his work in mergers and acquisitions and valuation of hard-to-value securities and financial transactions.

Prior to joining Moody’s, Dr. Kan worked in the valuation and financial services practices of Law and Economics Consulting Group (LECG) and Marshall & Stevens. His written works have appeared in the Journal of Banking and Finance, Financial Management, Journal of International Business Studies and the 2008 edition of the Handbook of Finance. Dr. Kan also served on the boards of the Stamford CFA Society and the Licensed International Financial Analyst program.

Dr. Kan received a Ph.D. in finance from Old Dominion University. He also received an MBA and a B.Sc. in Electronics & Telecommunications Engineering from Middle East Technical University. Professionally, Dr. Kan holds designations as a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), Financial Risk Manager (FRM), and Licensed International Financial Analyst (LIFA).

Andrew Kaplin, Ph.D., Director-Research
Moody's Analytics
 
Andrew works in the Credit Risk Modeling group of Moody's Analytics and is the Model Manager for Portfolio Products. His main responsibilities include research, model development, and client support.

He holds an MS in Applied Mathematics from the St. Petersburg State University and a Ph.D. in Finance from the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. Prior to joining Moody's KMV, Andrew taught Finance courses at the Kellogg School of Management. His work has been published in the Journal of Econometrics. Andrew's research interests include credit risk and interest rate risk models, modeling of structured instruments in credit portfolio framework, market microstructure effects around corporate events, and capital structure choices as it relates to macroeconomic conditions.

Les Kiehnau, ASA, MRICS
Senior Managing Director and Senior Vice President – American Appraisal

Les Kiehnau serves as the senior managing director for the U.S. real estate and related assets practice of American Appraisal. American Appraisal is an employee owned global firm with over a 100-year history.  It is a world leader in valuation and advisory services working closely with management and other professionals for a wide array of clients from privately owned entities to those in the Fortune 500.

Mr. Kiehnau has experience in the valuation of investment real estate; user-based, specialized real estate; and real-estate-related enterprises.  He has appraised property in many U.S. states and has served on foreign assignments.  Purposes have included possible purchase or possible sale, sale/leaseback, property tax, financial and tax reporting, fair rental, insurance, and financing.

Advisory services performed by Mr. Kiehnau have included appraisal review, litigation support and testimony, appraisal management, market research, condition studies, construction monitoring, reserve/capital expenditure requirement studies, and offer/option analysis.

Property types he has appraised include casinos, golf courses, hotels, land, land developments, general- and special-purpose industrial plants, airports, condominium developments, nursing homes, office buildings, parking structures, research and development property, retail centers, service stations, marinas, schools, government facilities, health clubs, banking facilities, apartments, service centers, infrastructure, warehouses, and waterfront properties.

Mr. Kiehnau has valued such notable and diverse properties as Caesars Palace Las Vegas; the Old Course Hotel and Duke’s Golf Course in St. Andrews, Scotland; several hundred Marriott hotels; land’s end Cabo San Lucas, Mexico; U.S. federal courthouses; and proposed interstate toll way infrastructure.

He has provided opinions of value under various premises including for exchange in the open market, forced liquidation, and as a going concern.  He has also opined on partial ownership positions such as air rights.

Kent Kirby – Managing Director, Portfolio Credit Risk Administration
Commerce Bank, N.A.

In his position with Commerce Bank, Kent Kirby has the responsibility to create and execute methodologies to identify, monitor and manage risks in the various lending portfolios.  He is a member of the bank’s Credit Policy Committee, Enterprise Data Integration Council and Oversight Committee for Information Security.  

Prior to assuming his current position in 1991, Kirby was Manager of Loan Review.  Prior to joining Commerce in 1988, he held a variety of lending, loan review and credit administration positions at First Republic Bank - Dallas.   

Formally trained as a historian and theologian at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago before receiving an MBA from the University of Kansas, Kirby provides a somewhat different perspective to the business of banking.

Commerce Bank is an $18 billion ($10 billion in loans) bank.  For more than 140 years, Commerce has been meeting the financial services needs of individuals and businesses. Commerce provides a diversified line of financial services, including business and personal banking, wealth management, financial planning, and investments. Commerce operates in the Midwest, primarily in Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, Oklahoma and Colorado with more than 370 locations and also has operating subsidiaries involved in mortgage banking, credit related insurance and venture capital.

Irina Korablev – Director
Moody’s Analytics

Irina Korablev joined KMV (which became Moody’s Analytics) in 1998 when it was a 40 person company.  Irina’s first project was a default management system, where she worked directly with the founders.  She continued her career in the Single Obligor Research group and now leads Moody's KMV research data operations.  Irina is also responsible for the full spectrum of validation studies for Moody’s Analytics models; including EDF model validation, and validation of loan valuation against LPC prices.

Irina has recently completed the development of the new generation loss given default model for the Moody’s Analytics LossCalc™ product.  As a Model Manager she currently owns the LossCalc™ model and is working on the private firm default probability model for RiskCalc™ Russia.    

She holds an MS in Applied Mathematics from Lomonosov Moscow State University and MA in Economics from Central European University completing her studies in the University of Essex, UK and CEU Budapest, Hungary.

Som-lok Leung – Executive Director
International Association of Credit Portfolio Managers (IACPM)

Som-lok Leung is the Executive Director of the International Association of Credit Portfolio Managers (IACPM).  The IACPM is a non-profit industry association dedicated to advancing the practice of credit portfolio management through advocacy, research, education, communication and promotion of sound practice.  The association has grown enormously in its 9 year history; its membership now comprises over 90 financial institutions around the globe.  In his role, Som-lok oversees all aspects of the association, and reports to the IACPM Board of Directors.

Previously, Som-lok was a Senior Director in the Moody’s KMV Client Solutions group, working with a wide range of banks, insurance companies, and asset managers.  Prior to joining MKMV, Som-lok accumulated over a dozen years of risk management experience, both in staff positions and as a management consultant. Som-lok has been Director of Risk Policy at Nomura Securities, responsible for covering both market and credit risk on the New York trading floor, and also Director of Credit Risk Control at the Union Bank of Switzerland in NY, responsible for both counterparty credit risk and risk measurement and management for the corporate loan portfolio.  This followed a career as a management consultant at Oliver, Wyman & Co. that focused primarily on risk management. Som-lok graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University.

Mark Levonian – Senior Deputy Comptroller for Economics
Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC)

Mark Levonian is Senior Deputy Comptroller for Economics at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).  Prior to joining the OCC, he was Vice President at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and previously managed the Banking Studies Department of the New York Fed. Dr. Levonian has been an advisor to central banks in various countries, and has consulted for both the IMF and the World Bank.  He also has been a lecturer in finance at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Levonian is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Amnon Levy, Managing Director, Portfolio Research
Moody’s Analytics

Dr. Amnon Levy heads the Portfolio Research Group that is responsible for research and model development for MKMV’s portfolio, CDO, and valuation models. 

Dr. Levy holds a B.A. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley and a Ph.D. in Finance from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University.  Prior to joining MKMV, Dr. Levy was a visiting assistant professor at the Stern School of Business, New York University, and the Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley.  He has also taught Corporate Finance at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University and worked at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.  Dr. Levy has been published in the Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Monetary Economics, Encyclopedia of Quantitative Finance and Risk. His current research interests include modeling credit portfolio risk, correlated recovery risk, as well as liquidity risk.


Lee Medoff – Associate Director, Risk Management Services
Moody’s Analytics

Lee Medoff is a Lead Managing Consultant with Moody’s Analytics Risk Management Services (RMS), which he joined in 2008.  In his role with RMS he has overseen the development, validation, and calibration of PD models across multiple business sectors.  Prior to joining Moody’s Analytics, Lee spent several years as a regulator with the Models and Methodologies Group of Bank Supervision at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he focused on the review of Economic Capital, Operational and Credit Risk models at  both foreign and domestic Large Complex Bank Organizations.  Lee has over ten years of modeling and statistical programming experience, including several years spent with the Decision Sciences Group of JPMorgan Chase, where he built credit models and designed and maintained an optimization engine.  He holds advanced degrees in statistics and economics from Columbia University and New York University, respectively.

Perry Mehta, Ph. D. – Senior Director, Risk Management Services
Moody’s Analytics

Perry Mehta, Senior Director, has been with Moody’s Analytics Risk Management Services for three years, where he leads engagements, and designs new service offerings, in risk management areas including stress testing, risk ratings, regulatory compliance, valuation of illiquid assets, and ALM.  Before joining Moody’s, Perry was a Senior Manager with Ernst & Young’s credit risk consulting team for three years, where he participated in, or led, projects on regulatory compliance, economic capital, risk governance, credit risk ratings, and model validation. Prior to E&Y, Perry spent eight years as Modeling Specialist, and Capital Markets Specialist, with the Federal Reserve, where he reviewed the economic capital models, Basel II compliance, and VaR and interest rate risk methodologies at supervised institutions.  He helped write the Basel II US supervisory guidance, and trained fellow regulators in the US and overseas on ALM and model validation.  Perry has a Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, and an MBA and PhD in Finance from Temple University, Philadelphia.

Mimi Mengis – Senior Vice President, Corporate Treasury
Union Bank

Mimi Mengis, Senior Vice President in Corporate Treasury at Union Bank, is the liquidity risk manager for Union Bank.  Since joining the bank in May 2009, she has led the development of an enterprise-wide framework for liquidity risk management to meet rapidly evolving regulatory policy and best practices.

Prior to joining Union Bank, Ms. Mengis was affiliated with Promontory Financial Group where she advised financial institution clients on liquidity risk management and capital planning.  From 2006 through early 2008 Ms. Mengis was Senior Vice President at Washington Mutual where she was responsible for wholesale funding, liquidity risk management, rating agency relations and fixed income investor strategy.  While at WaMu she diversified the bank’s funding portfolio and led a strategic overhaul of its approach to liquidity risk management.  Previously she was Assistant Treasurer at Providian Financial (subsequently acquired by WaMu), where she had similar responsibilities.  At Providian, Ms. Mengis led efforts to restructure the firm’s funding sources and sell high risk assets when the company suffered major credit deterioration and rating downgrades.  Ms. Mengis began her banking career at Union Bank of Switzerland (formerly Swiss Bank Corporation) in New York and London where she was a securitization product specialist.

Ms. Mengis has an MBA in finance from Cornell University and a BA in Russian language and literature from Wellesley College.

Eiji Nishimura – Vice President
Mizuho Corporate Bank

Eiji Nishimura is a Vice President in Credit Risk Management Unit for Americas Region in Risk Management Division at Mizuho Corporate Bank. He has 15 year of banking experience.

Mr. Nishimura joined the bank’s Portfolio Management Department in N.Y. and has been involved in implementation of MKMV as well as other cutting edge tools in the bank since 1999. Since joining the bank, he has been in the functional role of Credit Portfolio Management and his experience at the bank spans from CLO management/operation, various aspects of CDS products, database design & management, data/MIS infrastructure design, quantitative models (including MKMV’s), market signal based analysis and calls for sectors & single names, etc.

Prior to joining Mizuho, Eiji was at Citibank, N.A., Global Transaction Services in New York, his experience at the bank includes competitive intelligence and risk management projects for “Windows on Risk” Committee. Mr. Nishimura holds a B.S. from Bentley University and MBA from Columbia Business School.

Mikael Nyberg – Managing Director, Moody’s Analytics Advisory Services
Moody’s Analytics

Mikael Nyberg leads Moody’s Analytics Advisory Services as a Managing Director. The Advisory Services group provides consulting, product training and implementation services for Moody’s Analytics portfolio, credit risk measurement and valuation products. The team lead by Mikael is responsible for the implementation and introduction of RiskFrontier™, Moody’s Analytics’ latest portfolio and CDO technology.  His background includes having worked since 1998 on the global implementation and product management of KMV EDF™ and Portfolio Manager™ products.  In these roles was responsible for the research and new development of models, software and data products. He educational background includes B.Sc.(ECON) in Finance and Accounting from the London School of Economics and a M.B.A. from IESE in Barcelona. His thought leadership focus provides clients with frameworks and insights for addressing their most pressing portfolio strategy issues.

Doug Odom – Power Accounts Analyst
Northern California Power Agency

Doug Odom is a Power Accounts Analyst for Northern California Power Agency.  NCPA is a joint action agency providing energy related services for its 17 member communities and districts located in Northern and Central California.

Mr. Odom provides daily credit risk and compliance oversight for the Agency’s wholesale energy operations. His duties include counterparty credit review and risk management.  Prior to joining NCPA, Mr. Odom performed accounting and internal audit work for Sacramento Municipal Utility District.

Mr. Odom has worked in the energy industry for eighteen years.  He holds a Bachelor of Science in Accounting from California State University, Sacramento and a MBA from Golden Gate University in San Francisco.  Mr. Odom has also held an active CPA license in California for 20 years.  

Denis O’Donoghue – Senior Vice President, Credit Risk Modeling,
TD Bank

Denis leads a dedicated group of Risk Management professionals charged with the design, implementation, and maintenance of the Credit Risk Rating models and methodologies for both TD Bank – America’s Most Convenient Bank, and TD Bank Financial Group.

He was part of the Bank’s senior leadership team responsible for TDBFG’s successful Basel II AIRB implementation in Canada.  In 2009 Denis and his family relocated to Cherry Hill, NJ, to lead TD’s U.S. based businesses towards Basel compliance under both the Canadian and U.S. rules.

Denis’ business and credit background, together with the experience gained from dealing with lending and regulatory issues across multiple jurisdictions provide him with a balanced view of both the challenges and benefits of compliance in today’s regulatory framework.

Bogie Ozdemir – Vice President
BMO Financial Group

Bogie Ozdemir is a Vice President in BMO Financial Group responsible for Economic Capital, Stress Testing, Basel
Analytics and jointly responsible for ICAAP.  Previously he was a Vice President in Standard & Poor’s Credit Risk
Services group.  In this role, he is globally responsible for engineering new products and solutions, business
development and management.

He co-authored a papers titled “Practical and Theoretical Challenges in Validating Basel Parameters: Key Learnings from the Experience of a Canadian Bank” and “Basel Requirement of Downturn LGD: Modeling and Estimating PD & LGD Correlations” both published in The Journal of Credit Risk.  His paper titled “Estimating and Validating Long-Run Probability of Default with respect to Basel II Requirements” was published in the Journal of Risk Model Validation in 2008.

• Discount Rate for Workout Recoveries: An Empirical Study.  Working Paper 2007, Brooks Brady, Peter Chang, Peter Miu, Bogie Ozdemir, David Schwartz - Best Paper Award: The Fifth NTU International 2007
• Stress-Testing Probability of Default and Migration Rate with respect to Basel II Requirements”, forthcoming in Journal of Model Risk Validation.
• Managing Capital Buffers in the Pillar II Framework - Designing and implementing an effective ICAAP – Dealing with procyclicality, reconciling short- and long-term views of capital, Miu, Ozdemir, working paper.
• Can Basel III Work? – Examining the New Capital Stability Rules by The Basel Committee – A Theoretical and Empirical Study of Capital Buffers, Miu, Ozdemir, Giesinger   The Journal of Financial Transformation, 2010

Bogie also co- authored a book titled “Basel II Implementation: A Guide to Developing and Validating a Compliant, Internal Risk Rating System.

Tu Packard – Senior Economist
Moody’s Analytics

Tu Packard is a Senior Economist at Moody's Analytics. She is chief editor of the World Workstation, which provides forward-looking analysis and detailed forecasts for the world's most important economies, and is principal author of the MEDC Scorecard Model to compare performance across countries and to assess their vulnerability to exogenous shocks. Ms. Packard holds an M. Phil. and an M.A. in economics from Columbia University and a B.A. from Bryn Mawr College. She has published peer-reviewed papers on the international business cycle, prototype models for developing and transition economies, monetary policy for developing countries, the effects of external liberalization on economic performance and social policy implications, country risk analysis, global financial crises and early warning indicators.

She has more than 20 years of experience in international economic consulting for clients that include the United Nations, the World Bank, the Ford Foundation, business enterprises and academic institutions. Her engagements included preparing a paper on banking system crises in East Asia and Mexico for a World Bank training program on banking soundness and banking crises, and participation in World Bank, UNDP
and USAID supported projects and programs to implement sustainable development and poverty reduction and to strengthen the macroeconomic management capacity of governments in developing countries in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

Prior to joining Moody's Analytics she served as senior technical advisor to Vietnam's Ministry of Finance on a World Bank supported project to conduct diagnostic audits (operational reviews) of the country's largest state-owned enterprises. Before that, she served as UNDP lead poverty advisor to help the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) prepare Vietnam’s Poverty Reduction Strategy papers, playing a key coordination and consultation role between MPI and other relevant agencies and donors (including the IMF and World Bank). As a World Bank consultant, she trained Vietnamese officials to use the Vietnam Revised Minimum Standard Model (RMSM), and advised the government in its efforts to revise and improve the model to better capture structural economic change in Vietnam. In 2001, as consultant to the World Bank, she helped Vietnam's Ministry of Planning and Investment to devise a methodology to analyze the recurrent cost implications of the Public Investment Program (PIP). In 1999, as a consultant to Vietnam's Ministry of Finance with responsibility for managing the analytical component of a detailed financial survey of 400 state-owned enterprises, she analyzed the key indicators of SOE performance.


Kamal Panda, Senior Vice President, Wholesale Loan Services
Wells Fargo Bank

Kamal is responsible for data integrity and risk analysis solutions in Wholesale Banking group of Wells Fargo Bank as it pertains to various regulations like BASEL II, BSA, AML and REG-W etc. Kamal has spent 10 years in wholesale banking in various areas including finance, customer strategies, common customer definition, exposure aggregation and credit risk management. Prior to that Kamal worked in a consulting role for implementation of Peoplesoft based ERP solutions in large manufacturing and educational institutions. Kamal has a MBA from University of Michigan and has a total of 20 years of industry experience.

Stephen P. Peca, CPA, MRICS – Director
Moody’s Analytics

Stephen Peca is an accomplished commercial real estate and credit professional with 30 years of experience in banking and finance, project management, and education, the latter through an active role at New York University’s Shack Institute of Real Estate.

Prior to joining Moody’s Analytics, Stephen was with Fleet Securities, Inc. where he established a loan sales and trading business for the bank. He also spent eleven years at The Fuji Bank, Limited, where he originated and managed a loan and commitment portfolio averaging over US$1 billion. There he gained extensive experience arranging international and cross border loans, project financing and other financial structures.

Before joining the Fuji Bank, Limited, he was a Vice President for The Tucker Companies, Inc., a regional real estate developer and property manager. He also spent seven years at Urban Investment & Development Co., a national real estate developer, manager and investor.

Stephen has a Certificate in Advanced Management from the University of Chicago and a BBA in Public Accounting from Loyola University Chicago. He is a Certified Public Accountant, a licensed real estate salesperson in Illinois and New Jersey, a Technical Real Estate Instructor in State of New York. Stephen is also a member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (MRICS, Chartered Management Consultancy Surveyor), the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, and CoreNet Global.

His first book, Real Estate Development and Investment: A Comprehensive Approach, was published in May 2009.

Daniel Pouliot – Senior Manager
National Bank of Canada

Daniel has been working at National Bank of Canada since 2001. He previously worked in the Operational Risk field where he was leading the implementation of a comprehensive operational losses data collection process. He also worked on developing an Advanced Approach for measuring Operational Risk Economic Capital. Daniel also worked several years in Corporate Strategic Planning where he has managed working committees in charge of identifying business strategies to accelerate revenue growth for a given risk tolerance. He worked in several M&A and strategic partnership projects as well. More recently, Daniel was in charge of the Retail Credit Risk Modeling department where he had to deliver sophisticated modeling solutions to insure compliancy with Basel II requirements and to support the business line effort to grow its business in a profitable matter. Daniel is now in charge of the Credit Economic Capital department as well as the Specialised Credit Risk Model section. He closely works with business lines – from Retail lending to corporate banking- to support the global pricing initiatives and their modeling needs.

He holds a M.Sc in Finance from Laval University in Quebec City.

Shisheng Qu, Ph. D. - Director
Moody's Analytics

Shisheng Qu joined Moody's KMV in 2004, and has been working on public firm EDF research, credit spread research, and bank default research. During his tenure in the firm, he contributed to the research and releases of the financial EDF model, the Japanese EDF model, the EDF8 model, as well as the CDS Spread Implied EDF model. He has also involved in other research activities including credit migration and single obligor valuation.

Prior to joining the firm, he researched empirical asset pricing at the University of Texas at Austin as a Ph.D. student, focusing on institutional investors and analyst earnings forecasts. He is originally from China, where he received his Ph. D. in Engineering Mechanics from Tsinghua University, and worked in the International Finance Department of China Development Bank.

Jennie Raymond – Director of Credit and Collateral Systems, Analysis and Policy
Federal Home Loan Bank Atlanta

Jennie Raymond is Director of Credit and Collateral Systems, Analysis and Policy at the Federal Home Loan Bank Atlanta.  Her responsibilities include credit risk analytics for financial institutions, valuation and discounting of pledged collateral, IT systems related to the Credit and Collateral areas and risk reporting to Executive Management. 

Prior to joining FHLBA Jennie was employed in Ernst & Young’s Financial Services Advisory Practice where she provided model validation and other risk related services to clients in the financial institutions area.  Before that Jennie was Manager of the Credit Risk Analytics area at SunTrust Bank, in Atlanta, where she had primary responsibility for all statistical and analytical work related to credit risk, including risk rating models, loss severity models and economic capital estimation.

Jennie received her Ph.D. in economics at Vanderbilt University and was Associate Professor in the College of Business at Auburn University.  Her fields of specialization include econometrics where she has more than twenty refereed publications.

Heather Russell – Associate Director, Single Obligor Research Group
Moody’s Analytics

Heather Russell is an Associate Director in the Single Obligor Research Group.  Since joining Moody’s Analytics in 2008, she has contributed to the development of the Spread Implied EDF model and the RiskCalc Scorecard. 

Heather holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from Harvard University, an MFE from Haas (UC Berkeley), and a B.S. in mathematics from the California Institute of Technology.

Anurag Saksena – Chief Risk Officer
Freddie Mac

Anurag Saksena is a chief risk officer with significant experience in managing risks for banking, life insurance, captive finance and GSE companies operating in domestic and international markets. He has a demonstrated record of building and managing firm-wide frameworks that encompass a full range of risks including market, credit, counterparty, liquidity and operational risks. He is experienced in leveraging cross-divisional synergies
in establishing risk architectures that can meet varying needs of multiple stakeholders. Additionally, he has managed complex regulatory relationships under a variety of circumstances and in multiple jurisdictions.

Saksena joined Freddie Mac as its first Chief Enterprise Risk Officer in August 2005 reporting directly to the CEO and the business & risk committee of the Board of Directors. Over the last five years, Saksena led the development of an enterprise-wide risk, governance and performance management framework for the company. In 2Q, 2010
as a senior advisor, he advised the company on strategic issues such as impact of changes to Basel II accord and systemic risk regulation.

From 1999 to 2004, Saksena was Senior Managing Director and Head of Enterprise Risk Management at GMAC. He pioneered a partnership-based approach to enterprise risk management which spanned across all eight businesses including commercial finance, residential and commercial real estate, insurance, automotive and banking. Previously, Saksena held risk and portfolio management positions of increasing responsibility at Société Générale in New York, Royal Bank Financial Group in Toronto and Great-West Life Assurance Company in Winnipeg.

Saksena is a member of the Board of Directors of Inova Health System where he serves as a member of the Safety and Quality Committee of Fair Oaks Hospital in Virginia. In addition, he is on the editorial board of the Journal of Risk in Financial Institutions and a member of the Strategic Risk Council of the US Conference Board.

Saksena is a graduate of the executive development program at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He earned his doctorate in theoretical physics from the University of Manitoba, Canada and his Master of Science and Bachelor of Science degrees from the University of Delhi, India.

James J. Sarrail – Senior Director
Moody’s Analytics

Mr. Sarrail has an extensive background in credit risk management.  As a Senior Director at Moody’s Analytics, he currently assists a wide variety of financial institutions on the use of quantitative tools for managing individual credit risk exposure, as well as portfolios of credit-risky instruments. Prior to joining Moody’s Analytics, Mr. Sarrail worked in the corporate treasury group at McKesson Corporation, where he helped to manage the firm’s short-term and long-term capital needs.  Mr. Sarrail has also held a variety of positions in wholesale lending at the Bank of America, where he developed RAROC pricing/profitability tools focused on economic capital allocation and the marginal impact of new business transactions.  He received a Master of International Management degree, from the American Graduate School of International Management, Thunderbird, and a BA in Economics from Bucknell University.

Richard Schuster – Senior Economist, Economic Analysis and Forecasts
Export Development Canada

Richard’s current area of responsibility is Country Risk Assessment with an emphasis on Emerging Markets.  He is responsible for Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa at EDC, but has covered Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Asia, as well as Energy and Metal Markets, Japan, and Canada. 

Prior to joining EDC, he worked for more than a decade in the Economics Division at the Bank of Nova Scotia in Toronto where his focus was Country Risk Analysis as well.  He holds an MA and BA in Economics from the University of Waterloo. 

Tim Smallow – Vice President, Corporate Treasury
Union Bank

Tim Smallow, Vice President in Corporate Treasury at Union Bank, is Liquidity Manager at Union Bank.  Since joining the bank in 2010, he has led development of the bank’s short-term cash forecast and intra-day liquidity management.  Prior to Union Bank, Mr. Smallow was responsible for global treasury services program management at JPMorgan Chase, treasury operations and cash management at Washington Mutual, and marketing, operations, and retail deposit product management at Providian Financial.  His work has focused on building Treasury leadership in banking and promoting a bank-wide liquidity culture for managing day to day business decisions and client focus.

Ken Smith – Managing Director, Commercial Surety
Travelers

Ken manages the Travelers Commercial Surety operations in the Midwest Region and is responsible for a team that underwrites surety credit for companies in a wide range of industries and in size from small and middle market private companies up to large public companies.  Surety is a form of unsecured credit and is underwritten principally on the credit quality of the principal company.  Ken is a key participant in the analytics practice that develops credit and portfolio analysis tools used to manage the Travelers Commercial Surety portfolio.  Prior to Travelers, Ken was a Vice President of Investment Banking in the Financial Institutions Group of Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Inc., and an Associate in the Wachovia Capital Markets Group.  Ken has an MBA from Washington University and BSBA from Southern Illinois University. 

Mark Soulliere – Director, Credit Risk
Tenaska

Mark is the Director of Credit Risk at Tenaska.  He is responsible for counterparty credit risk management for Tenaska's three trading operations, Tenaska BioFuels, Tenaska Marketing Ventures and Tenaska power services.  Mark graduated from Villanova University with a degree in Accounting.  He worked for Kiewit Construction and DMSI in Omaha prior to joining Tenaska in 1997.  He currently serves on the board of directors as Vice President for the International Energy Credit Association. 

Roger M. Stein – Group Managing Director, Quantitative Research and Analytics
Moody’s Corporation 

Roger M. Stein, PhD is a Group Managing Director at Moody’s in New York where he leads the newly formed Quantitative Research and Analytics group. After Moody’s acquired KMV, he co-headed MKMV’s research and product development. Prior to that he led Moody’s Risk Management Services’ Research Group. Stein has authored numerous professional and academic articles and serves on the editorial boards of several finance-related journals. He has been working in the field of credit professionally since 1989.

Dr. Stein has a Bachelor's degree from the State University of New York at Binghamton in Mathematics and Japanese Studies and a Masters degree and a Ph. D. from New York University. He is a frequent lecturer at the New York University Stern School of Business, has authored numerous academic and professional articles on quantitative finance and credit, and is the co-author of Seven Methods for Transforming Corporate Data into Business Intelligence (Prentice Hall) and Co-author of Active Credit Portfolio Management in Practice (Wiley).

lya Strebulaev – Associate Professor of Finance
Graduate School of Business, Stanford University

Professor Strebulaev's research is in the area of corporate finance, capital structure, credit risk, as well as financial auctions. Recent work has examined issues of dynamic capital structure, zero-leverage behavior, the effect of firm size on leverage, and empirical estimation of firms' financing decisions.

His research focuses on corporate finance, capital structure, credit risk, and financial auctions. His most recent work has examined issues of dynamic capital structure, zero-leverage behavior, the effect of firm size on leverage, and empirical estimation of firms' financing decisions. His work includes papers published in the Journal of Finance, the Review of Financial Studies, and the Journal of Financial Economics. Ilya presented his work at the meetings of the American, Western, and European Finance Associations. Ilya has been awarded the First Paper Prize of the Brattle Award for the best corporate paper published in the Journal of Finance and the Trefftzs Award by the Western Finance Association.

Charles Stewart – Senior Director
Moody’s Analytics

Charles Stewart is a Senior Director of Moody’s Analytics.  Charles joined Moody’s KMV in early 2006 from Barclays Bank PLC where he worked in various capacities over a 28 year career.  Over recent time he has further developed his extensive risk management experience and familiarity with many of the challenges associated with commercial and corporate banking, working with financial institutions and regulators around the world.  Charles is able to draw on his understanding of both theory and day to day practicality in order to assist banks with the development of their risk management planning and strategies.

Dr. Yaakov Tsaig – Associate Director
Moody’s Analytics

Dr. Yaakov Tsaig is a member of the Portfolio Research Group. He is currently involved in research and model development in the areas of instrument valuation, portfolio optimization, liquidity risk, and asset/liability management.

Yaakov earned a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a M.Sc. in Computer Science from Tel Aviv University. He earned his Ph.D. in Computational Mathematics and Engineering from Stanford University. He has published in the areas of image processing and signal processing, and received the 2004-2007 Signal Processing Best Paper Award and the 2005-2007 Most Cited Paper Award in Signal Processing for his work. His research interests include liquidity risk, asset pricing, as well as applications of vector space analysis and optimization in financial risk management.

John Walter – Managing Director
Bank of America

John Walter is Managing Director at Bank of America.  He has been with Bank of America for 21 years in various Finance and Treasury capacities.  Prior to joining Bank of America, John was a Senior Treasury Analyst at the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco.  He earned an MS in Applied Economics from the University of California at Santa Cruz.  John is also a Chartered Financial Analyst and member of the Association of Investment Management and Research. 

Yashan Wang – Director, Portfolio Research
Moody’s Analytics

Yashan heads the valuation analytics team that conducts research and develops portfolio valuation and risk models.

Yashan earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Science and Technology of China and a Ph.D. in Management Science from the Graduate School of Business, Columbia University.  Prior to joining Moody’s Analytics in 2005, he was a Senior Research Consultant at MSCIBarra. Prior to that, Yashan was an Assistant Professor of Management Science at the MIT Sloan School, where he taught classes in probability theory, stochastic processes, and optimization to Ph.D. and MBA students.  Yashan’s research work has been published in Annals of Applied Probability, Operations Research, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management. His current research interests include credit and interest rate risk modeling and Monte Carlo methods in financial engineering.

Sheldon Weatherstone, CA, CA-IT – Professor of Accounting
University of Ottawa's Telfer School of Management

Sheldon Weatherstone has been an accounting professor for the University of Ottawa's Telfer School of Management since 2006 where he teaches Managerial and Cost Accounting, Auditing Theory and Accounting Information Systems Auditing, and the penultimate course in the accounting program, Case Studies in Accounting. He is a Canadian chartered accountant, a US certified public accountant, a chartered accountant specialized in Information Technology and also holds a Masters in Business Administration.

His career spans some 33 years, some of which was spent as a practicing public accountant but most of which was spent with Export Development Canada as a financial analysis expert. He is the author of an awarding winning credits insurance automated approval system which he designed and implemented in 1994. He spent the last 15 years of his career with EDC as the Director of Risk Methodologies, Standards and Systems in the Risk Management Office where he was responsible for the introduction, development and support of MKMV's Risk Analyst and Risk Advisor, and RiskCalc. Sheldon was also instrumental in implementing best practices for improved productivity in various small business credit assessment processes at EDC.

He spent 12 years serving on the Moody's Risk Advisor Advisory Group, the last 10 years of which was as Chairperson.

When Sheldon wants to let his hair down, he heads for the ski slopes, the golf courses, the cycling trails and the Outer Banks for some windsurfing, weather permitting of course. He also holds a second degree black belt in karate.

Marilyn Kramer Weitzman, MAI, CRE, FRICS – President
The Weitzman Group, Inc.

Marilyn Kramer Weitzman is President of The Weitzman Group, Inc., a nationwide real estate consulting firm headquartered in New York City.  The Weitzman Group, Inc. is a consulting firm of 13 multi-disciplinary real estate professionals providing objective, unbiased and imaginative real estate advice and counsel to those engaged in evaluating, buying, selling, leasing, financing or developing real estate.  The firm’s clientele include major pension funds, money center banks, insurance companies, investment banking firms, and developers, among others.

Mrs. Weitzman has been a principal in her own firm since 1981.  She was formerly an Assistant Vice President of the Investment Services Division at Landauer Associates, Inc., in New York City.

Her firm has evaluated major trophy properties such as Rockefeller Center, One World Financial Center, 7 World Trade Center, One Liberty Plaza, Mall of America and the New York Hilton Hotel.

She received Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA in Finance from the New York University School of Business Administration.  She also holds an MAI designation (Member of the Appraisal Institute), a CRE designation (Counselors of Real Estate), and a FRICS designation (Fellow Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors).

Mrs. Weitzman’s active professional affiliations include the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF), the Counselors of Real Estate (Past National Vice-President), the Association of Real Estate Women (AREW Past President), the Appraisal Institute (past Vice-Chairman, Education Committee and President, New York Chapter), the Urban Land Institute and WX (New York Women Executives in Real Estate).

In addition, she has served as a Board Member of the New York City Industrial Development Agency.

Mrs. Weitzman has lectured extensively throughout the United States and is a past faculty member of The Real Estate Institute of New York University where she has taught courses and seminars on Real Estate Market and Investment Analysis and the Advanced Applications course in appraisal.  She also has been a certified faculty member for the Appraisal Institute where she has taught courses in Real Estate Market Analysis, Case Studies in Real Estate Valuation, Valuation Analysis and Report Writing and Advanced Applications, which are required or elective courses to achieve the MAI designation.

Vanessa Wu – Managing Director, Product Management
Moody's Analytics

Vanessa Wu heads the Portfolio and Valuation product line as well as the RiskCalc and LossCalc franchise in Product Management.

Vanessa joined Moody's KMV Client Service team in February 1997 after a few years in litigation and economic consulting. Vanessa assisted global financial institutions in the implementation of KMV's solutions for risk assessment and credit portfolio management, including two years in the KMV London office. Prior to Product Management, Vanessa headed the Global Client Support and Training team.

Vanessa holds a BS with Honors in Applied Mathematics with an Emphasis in Business Administration and a Specialization in Computing from the University of California, Los Angeles

Robert Wyle – Senior Director, Product Management
Moody’s Analytics

Robert Wyle is currently a Senior Director in the Product Management Group of Moody’s Analytics.  Mr. Wyle is a seasoned Risk Management Executive with 18 years of Financial Services experience both as a risk manager and a software vendor.  His focus has been in asset/liability management, funds transfer pricing, product management, business development, sales, and customer relationship management.  Mr. Wyle is highly skilled at taking troubled and underperforming groups and transforming them into useful and well-managed organizations.

Prior to joining Moody’s analytics, Rob was a Senior Manager and Director of the National ALM Practice for the KPMG Financial Risk Management Advisory services.  Other roles include Director of Market Risk Management at E*TRADE Financial.  Mr. Wyle was responsible for the daily quantification of interest rate risk across all businesses and product lines.  Prior to E*TRADE, he was the Global Product Manager for ALM at SunGard BancWare.  Mr. Wyle managed the BancWare Convergence Asset/Liability Management software product suite which included the design and implementation of detailed product enhancements.  Mr. Wyle began his career in financial services at the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York where he built the ALM model that was in use until recently.

Jing Zhang, Ph. D. - Divisional Managing Director, Moody’s KMV Research
Moody's Analytics

Jing Zhang heads the Moody’s KMV Research Group for Moody’s Analytics. Jing joined the former KMV in 1998 in the research team, eventually becoming a Director in Research and managing day-to-day research operations of KMV. He made major contributions on single obligor EDF credit measures, correlation and portfolio research. Since then, Jing has held a number of senior roles at Moody's Analytics for the Americas, most recently, Senior Director, Head of the Credit Risk Specialist Group.

Jing obtained his Ph.D. from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and a Master Degree from Tulane University.

Janet Yinqing Zhao, Ph.D. – Associate Director, KMV Research
Moody’s Analytics

Janet works in the single obligor research group for Moody's KMV. She joined the team in January 2008. She has been working on a few RiskCalc models such as RiskCalc Large Firm model, RiskCalc China model, and RiskCalc Emerging Markets model. She has also been working on the exposure at default project. Janet obtained a Ph.D. in Finance from City University of Hong Kong and a Ph.D. in Accounting from Carnegie Mellon University. She has taught Financial Accounting at the Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University.