Welcome Aboard, New NABE Members!
Please join the NABE Board of Directors and staff in welcoming new members who joined over the last two months. Since May 2007, 528 persons have joined NABE. New members are added to the on-line registry at http://www.nabe.com/mem/search.html at the beginning of each month. IdeaLink, e-mailed to NABE members each month, includes a listing of new members. Here are selections from brief interviews, conducted by e-mail, with four new members:
Jared Franz
Associate Economist
T. Rowe Price
Baltimore, Md.
What is your current position?
I am associate economist, providing economic forecasting and analysis to support the
fixed income department at T. Rowe Price. I have held this position for about two months.
What is the main focus of your company or organization?
T. Rowe Price is primarily a money management firm.
What are your career highlights and education--before your current job?
I earned a Ph.D. in economics in May 2008 at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Why did you join NABE?
I joined NABE in order to establish industry contacts and to learn more about business
economics.
What drew you to economics?
It is the only Nobel field that I thought I could do.
 Roberto Guerra
Coordinator
Library and Information Center
Institute for Economic Research
UNAM
Mexico City, Mexico
What is your current position?
I coordinate the library and information center of the Institute for Economic Research, IIEc, an abbreviation of its Spanish name: Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas. Our institute is part of the gigantic UNAM, and probably many of you have heard of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, better known as UNAM, for its Spanish initials. My title is coordinator, and I am responsible for making sure that researchers at our institute and students participating in our postgraduate program receive the appropriate information and documentation support they need for their academic projects. To attain this purpose, my responsibility goes beyond the institute and includes special relations with other units that use our library system, or other higher education institutions, the government, or world organizations. I am about to complete six years in this position.
What is the main focus of your company or organization?
UNAM’s focus is many fold, but its first responsibility is the education of professionals in the different areas of science and humanities; then follows research, also in the sciences and the humanities, and finally, but of great relevance, comes the dissemination of culture and knowledge. In the context of UNAM, the main role of the institute is to develop economic research focused on Mexico, Latin America, and the globalization processes. IIEc also educates postgraduate students in the areas of economics and Latin American Studies.
What are your career highlights and education--before your current job?
I am a sociologist educated at UNAM, and the salient moments of my career are two: working for the government and discovering information science. The first experience showed me that government jobs were not for me.
There was a vacancy at UNAM’s newly created Center for Scientific and Humanistic Information, where I learned how to prepare bibliographies; to search for information; and to produce KWIC, KWAC, and citation indexes—actually—the first and maybe the only Latin American citation index in the social sciences. We were admirers and followers of Eugene Garfield, and I made my first entrepreneurial attempt producing a Current Contents in pediatrics, with the help of my elder brother who was a pediatrician.
Why did you join NABE?
Being honest, I must confess that I joined NABE to satisfy an information request of one of our researchers at IIEc. The former director of the institute was desperately looking for the NABE Outlook: Recession Watch, Feb. 2008, and she asked for my help. Then I realized that people at the more important economic libraries of Mexico City were as unaware as me of what NABE was, and naturally, no one had the publication I was trying to locate. Now we have a competitive advantage at our library and information center! In addition to the value of NABE studies, Webcasts and services, as subscribers of Business Economics, we now have access before anyone, to the most recent issue of the publication.
What drew you to economics?
When I was a student of sociology, it was a great accomplishment to work at one of the institutes. I remember that we felt a special respect and envy for those of our fellows already working at any of them. The admittance examination was a real difficult test, and you must have high grades to be considered just a candidate. IIEc was the highest ranked institute, and consequently I never pondered even the possibility of applying for a position—I considered myself defeated in advance. Later on, when I was working at the information center, economics became important to our patrons, and one of them proposed to me that I move to the institute with a better position. So it was money what drew me to economics.
 Hui Jiang
Market Analysis Manager
Navistar International Corp.
Warrenville, Ill.
What is your current position?
I am the market analysis manager at Navistar International Corporation. I am responsible for analyzing national and regional North American economies and forecasting industry trends, which is the critical part of corporate long-term strategic plan. I also provide various market reports, competitor and segmentation analysis. I have been with the company for over a year.
What is the main focus of your company or organization?
Navistar International Corp. is a holding company whose wholly owned subsidiaries produce international brand commercial and military trucks, MaxxForce brand diesel engines, IC brand school and commercial buses, and Workhorse brand chassis for motor homes and step vans. The company also provides truck and diesel engine parts and service. Another affiliate offers financing services.
What are your career highlights and education--before your current job?
Prior to joining Navistar, I spent almost seven years working for HAVI Global Solution, which is a supply chain partner for McDonalds Corporation. I was responsible for forecast modeling, market analysis, and production allocation for McDonalds’ Happy Meal programs. Projects I worked on were from global markets, such as the United States, Canada, Australia, China, Brazil, and Japan.
Why did you join NABE?
I was impressed about NABE’s valuable resources and economic conferences. It is the best place to meet other economists and learn from them.
What drew you to economics?
I have a master’s degree in economics and statistics. I am a number person. Economics simply adds the flavor on top of numbers and models. I have lots of fun working on economic analysis and presentations. I have successfully passed on such passion to my econ students through part-time college teaching experience and I’ll continue to do so.
Arne Pohlman
FocusEconomics
Global Economic Insight with a Regional Focus
Barcelona, Spain
What is your current position?
I am managing director at FocusEconomics. As the managing director, I
oversee the activities of the research team and heads the company’s sales
and marketing efforts. I have held this position for about eight years.
What is the main focus of your company or organization?
FocusEconomics provides economic intelligence reports for senior-level executives in multinational companies and governmental organizations, covering major economies in Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America.
What are your career highlights and education--before your current job?
I have worked as a legislative advisor for a Member of Parliament in the German Bundestag, and have served as an economist for a national German banking syndicate as well as for the European Union. I graduated in Economics from the University of Bonn where I specialized in monetary policy and development economics.
Why did you join NABE?
I joined in order to exchange views with fellow economists.
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