Hughes-Cromwick, Varvares Will Lead New Board

NABE members have elected Ellen Hughes-Cromwick as their president and Chris Varvares as their vice president for the 2007-2008 year.   In addition, members elected five new board members.  The two top officers and new board members will take office Sept. 11, at the close of the annual meeting in San Francisco.

Hughes-Cromwick, director and chief economist, Ford Motor Company, will succeed Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist, LaSalle Bank, as president.  Varvares, president of Macroeconomic Advisers LLC, will follow Hughes-Cromwick as vice president.  Tannenbaum’s annual report to NABE members appears in this issue.

Five new board members were elected.  Richard Brown, chief economist, FDIC, was elected to serve a two-year term, replacing Patrick Casey, who resigned early this year because of change in his job responsibilities.

Four other new board members were elected to serve three-year terms.   They are:Douglas G. Duncan, senior vice president and chief economist, Mortgage Bankers Association; Robert C. Fry, Jr., senior associate economist, DuPont; William A. Strauss, senior economist and economic adviser, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago; and Paul A. Thomas, chief economist, Intel Corporation.

Plans In Works To Expand Alliances, Celebrate 50th Year

Looking ahead to her year as president, Hughes-Cromwick said that she wants to expand on the new alliances with Risk Management and the CFA Institute, plus the long-standing relationship with AUBER. “In this fast-paced environment, business economists and those in the profession can have ever more resources and professional contacts at their disposal as tools” through such alliances, she said in an early August phone interview.

Hughes-Cromwick said that professional alliances also offer NABE members opportunities for education and professional development. “We have to continue to advance our professional standards to stay at the cutting edge. So I hope we can extend this work on alliances and also help shape a NABE program of activities that set the bar for our profession through a series of activities,” she said.

The new board also will ramp up the planning for NABE’s 50th anniversary year, 2008. The 2008 annual meeting is scheduled for Oct. 5-7 in Washington, D.C. “It’s also an election year and we’re excited about the program that will include a host of experts who will provide insight into top economic policy issues,” she said.  NABE is planning to name an honorary chair for the meeting.

Before joining Ford in 1996, Hughes-Cromwick was a senior economist at Mellon Bank from 1990 to 1996. Prior to her service at Mellon, she was assistant professor economics at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., and she served for two years on President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in government and French language at the University of Notre Dame, a Master’s degree in international development, and a Ph.D. in Economics at Clark University in Massachusetts.

Varvares has served on NABE’s board and serves on the planning committee for the 2007 annual meeting.    Also he has co-chaired, with Hughes-Cromwick, the organizing committee for the March policy conference in 2004, 2005, and 2006. Varvares co-founded Macroeconomic Advisers with Joel Prakken and Laurence Meyer in 1982.

Returning to the board will be Stuart Hoffman, former NABE president and senior vice president and chief economist, PNC Financial Services Group; Sara Johnson, managing director, Global Insight, Inc.; Catherine Mann, professor, Brandeis University; Lynn Reaser, chief economist and market strategist, Bank of America; Kenneth Simonson, chief economist, Associated General Contractors; Charles Steindel, senior vice president, Federal Reserve Bank of New York; Christopher Swann, economist, Bureau of Economic Analysis; Carl Tannenbaum, chief economist, LaSalle Bank; and Richard Wobbekind, associate dean, University of Colorado.

Retiring from the board will be Kathleen Camilli, president, Camilli Economics LLC; Gene Huang, chief economist and managing director, FedEx Corporation; Rosemary Marcuss, former NABE president and deputy director, Bureau of Economic Analysis; and John Silvia, chief economist, Wachovia Bank.

When all the ballots were in, the count showed a total of 377 members voting, with 54 percent casting electronic ballots and about 46 percent returning paper ballots. In the 2006 elections, 49 percent voted electronically and 51 percent on paper.

NABE’s board has 16 members: the president, vice president, two past presidents, and 12 directors.