Speaker Bios
Andrew Chamberlain, Chief Economist & Director of Economic Research, Glassdoor
Dr. Andrew Chamberlain is chief economist at Glassdoor. He oversees the economic research program at Glassdoor, providing research, data analysis and commentary on trends in today’s labor market. He is an applied microeconomist who has written widely on labor markets and public policy. His work has been published in academic journals, cited in U.S. congressional testimony, OECD working papers, and has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR, BBC and many others. He is a regular guest on a variety of live television and radio programs. Previously Andrew served as an economist in Washington, D.C. at the Tax Foundation and the Cato Institute, and as chief economist at Columbia Economics, L.L.C. Andrew received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, San Diego, and bachelor’s degrees in economics (cum laude) and business administration (magna cum laude) from the University of Washington in Seattle.
Keith Chen, Head of Economic Research, Uber
Keith Chen advises numerous companies on topics at the intersection of behavioral economics, business strategy, product design, and dynamic pricing. He currently serves as Head of Economic Research for Uber, where among other projects, he designed Uber's current "Surge" pricing model. Chen is also an Associate Professor of Economics with tenure at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. His research blurs traditional disciplinary boundaries in both subject and methodology, bringing unorthodox tools to bear on problems at the intersection of Economics, Psychology, and Biology. In early work examining the evolutionary origins of economic behavior, he has shown that when monkeys are taught to use money, they display many of the hallmark biases of human economic behavior, suggesting that some of our most fundamental biases are evolutionarily ancient. Professor Chen's most recent work focuses on how people's economic choices are influenced by the structure of their language. His work has shown that how a person's language encodes future events influences future-oriented behaviors as diverse as saving, smoking, and safe sex.
Lakshmanan Chidambaram, Senior Vice President, Tech Mahindra
Lakshmanan Chidambaram (CTL) heads Tech Mahindra’s Core Business Verticals comprising of Banking & Financial Services, Insurance, Manufacturing, Retail CPG & Travel, Aero & Defense and Healthcare Life sciences including BPO for North America. As a key member of the Transformation team helping the merger and amalgamation of Mahindra Satyam with Tech Mahindra, CTL provides strategic insights and drives the vertical centric go-to-market differentiated solutions to enable Tech Mahindra to realize the stretched growth objectives. CTL has over two decades of rich and varied global outsourcing business experience spanning Sales, Marketing, Relationship Management, Strategic Account Management & New Business Development. Prior to joining Mahindra Satyam, he was a key member of Syntel’s leadership team (since 2001), responsible for charting its growth in North America. His prior leadership roles include Bahwan CyberTek (Chief Operating Officer - USA) and a long association with the HCL group spanning eleven years (varied leadership positions across Sales, Marketing and General Management).
John Elder, Founder, Elder Research
20 years ago, John Elder founded Elder Research, America’s largest and most experienced analytics consultancy. With offices in Charlottesville VA, Baltimore MD, and Washington DC, they’ve solved hundreds of challenges for commercial and government clients by extracting actionable knowledge from all types of data. Dr. Elder co-authored 3 books -- on practical data mining, ensembles, and text mining -- two of which won “book of the year” awards. John has created data mining tools, was a discoverer of ensemble methods, chairs international conferences, and is a popular workshop and keynote speaker. Dr. Elder earned Engineering degrees from Rice and UVA, where he’s an Adjunct Professor. He was named by President Bush to serve 5 years on a panel to guide technology for national security. Lastly, John is grateful to be a follower of Christ and the father of five.
Peter Evans, Vice President, Center for Global Enterprise
Peter C. Evans is the Vice President at the Center for Global Enterprise where he is responsible for the Center’s research agenda and global partnerships. Previously, Dr. Evans held key strategy and market intelligence roles at General Electric. He was Director of GE Corporate’s Global Strategy and Analytics team. He also led GE Energy’s Global Strategy and Planning team for five years. Prior to joining GE, he was Director at Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA). He also worked as an independent consultant for a variety of corporate and government clients, including the US Trade Promotion Coordinating Committee, US Department of Energy, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the World Bank. Dr. Evans has extensive international energy experience, including two years as a Visiting Scholar at the Central Research Institute for the Electric Power Industry in Tokyo, Japan. His many articles and policy monographs include: The Age of Gas and the Power of Networks (General Electric, 2013), The Industrial Internet: Pushing the Boundaries of Minds and Machines (General Electric, 2012); Japan: Bracing for an Uncertain Energy Future (Brookings Institution, 2006), Liberalizing Global Trade in Energy Services (AEI Press, 2002) and Fettered Flight: Globalization and the Airline Industry with D. Yergin and R. H. Vietor (CERA, 2002). He received his master degree and PhD degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is a Board Member of the National Association for Business Economics.
Diana Farrell, founding President and Chief Executive Officer, JPMorgan Chase Institute
Diana Farrell is the founding President and Chief Executive Officer of the JPMorgan Chase Institute. Previously, Diana was the Global Head of the McKinsey Center for Government, providing research, proprietary data and other tools to support government leaders focused on improving performance. In addition, she was a leader of McKinsey’s global Public Sector Practice and a member of their Partner Review Committee. Diana served in the White House as Deputy Director of the National Economic Council and Deputy Assistant to the President on Economic Policy from 2009-2011. During her tenure, she led interagency processes and stakeholder management on a broad portfolio of economic initiatives, including financial reform, housing and innovation. Diana also coordinated stakeholder engagement around the passage of the historic Dodd-Frank Act and served as a member of the President’s Auto Recovery Task Force. Prior to serving in the Obama Administration, Diana was the head of the McKinsey Global Institute. Under her leadership, the Institute published extensively on the topics of productivity; competitiveness and growth; global financial system evolution and capital market developments; labor markets; healthcare systems; and energy. Diana has a B.A. from Wesleyan University and holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.
Martin Fleming, Vice President, Chief Analytics Officer, and Chief Economist, IBM
Martin Fleming is IBM’s Chief Economist and Vice President, Business Performance Services. In leading the Business Performance Services team, Martin leads an analytics center of competency focused on improving IBM’s business performance and achieving IBM’s 2015 financial goals. The Business Performance Services team creates new data sources, applies advanced analytic techniques, deploys new business processes, and drives resource reallocation to achieve increased revenue growth and improved organizational leverage. As IBM’s Chief Economist, Martin provides regular insight and analysis on relevant economic issues to IBM’s senior leadership team. Additional responsibilities include providing regular global economic forecasts; publishing economic flash reports to a broad cross-section of IBM managers; promoting a consistent IBM global economic outlook for internal decision making; and engaging with select IBM clients to a provide a view of the global economic outlook. Previously, within IBM Corporate Strategy, Martin led IBM’s Smarter Planet strategy development and execution with a focus on energy, climate change, transportation, water and Smarter Cities. Martin has also led IBM’s Emerging Business Opportunity program and IBM’s Global Sales and Distribution’s strategy and planning activities. Prior to joining IBM, Martin was a Principal Consultant and the technology practice leader at Abt Associates, Cambridge Massachusetts. He was also Vice President, Strategy for Reed-Elsevier, Inc., the Anglo-Dutch information company. Martin began his professional career at the System Dynamics Group, Alfred P. Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Martin is a member of the New York Association of Business Economists, the National Economists Club and the American Economics Association. Martin has served as a member of the Board of Directors of the National Association of Business Economists April 10, 2011(NABE), chaired the NABE Statistics Committee and the Julius Shiskin Awards Committee. Martin also served as President and held various offices of the Boston Association of Business Economists. His work has been published in a number of professional journals, such as the Journal of Economic and Social Measurement, Business Economics and American Demographics as well as other general interest publications such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Martin has testified to various US Congressional committees, including the Joint Economic Committee. Martin holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in Economics from Tufts University and a B.S. cum laude in Mathematics from Lowell Technological Institute.
Michael Horrigan, CBE, Associate Commissioner for Employment and Unemployment Statistics, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Since July 2014, Mike Horrigan has served as Associate Commissioner in the Office of Employment and Unemployment Statistics (OEUS) at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). From 2007 to 2014, Dr. Horrigan was the Associate Commissioner in the BLS Office of Prices and Living Conditions (OPLC), where he oversaw programs for the Consumer Price Index, Producer Price Index, Import and Export Price Indexes, and Consumer Expenditure Survey and a research division that conducts frontier research on price index and consumer expenditure issues. From 2004 to 2007, Dr. Horrigan served as Assistant Commissioner for the Producer Price Index program. From 2001 to 2004, he served as Assistant Commissioner in OEUS, heading the office that publishes Occupational Employment Statistics data, the biennial BLS long-term projections of industry and occupational employment, and the Occupational Outlook Handbook. Dr. Horrigan previously served as Director of the BLS National Longitudinal Surveys program (1996–2001) and directed the BLS Surveys of Employer-Provided Training (1991–1996). Dr. Horrigan served as a Senior Labor Economist at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers (1990–1991) and as a staff member for the Department of Labor Commission on Workforce Quality and Labor Market Efficiency (1988–1989). Dr. Horrigan began his career at BLS in 1986 as an economist in the Division of Labor Force Statistics in OEUS. He has a BA in Mathematics from the College of the Holy Cross and a Ph.D. in Economics from Purdue University. Dr. Horrigan is the author of numerous publications, including articles on unemployment duration, earnings inequality, and measuring the demand for skills in the labor force.
Stan Humphries, Chief Analytics Officer & Chief Economist, Zillow
Dr. Stan Humphries is the chief analytics officer of Zillow Group, a portfolio of the largest and most vibrant real estate and home-related brands on Web and mobile. Stan is the co-author of the New York Times Best Seller “Zillow Talk: The New Rules of Real Estate.” As chief analytics officer, Stan oversees Zillow Group financial planning and analysis, corporate strategy, economic research, data science and engineering, marketing and business analytics, and pricing analytics. Stan was one of Zillow’s earliest pre-launch employees and is the creator of the Zestimate and its first algorithm. Stan also serves as chief economist for Zillow Group. He has built out the industry-leading economics and analytics team at Zillow, a recognized voice of impartial, data-driven economic analysis on the U.S. housing market. Stan is a member of Fannie Mae’s Affordable Housing Advisory Council and the Commerce Department’s Data Advisory Council. Stan also serves on the Visiting Committee of the Department of Economics at the University of Washington. Prior to joining Zillow, Stan spent five years at Expedia, where he ran the advanced analytics team. Before Expedia, Stan served as a researcher and faculty member at the University of Virginia, and was previously a Presidential Management Fellow where he served at NASA, the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President, and the Technology Administration within the Department of Commerce. Stan has also served in the United States Peace Corps, where he taught high school physics and chemistry in the West African country of Benin. Stan has a Bachelor of Arts from Davidson College, a Master of Science in foreign service from Georgetown University and a Ph.D. in government from the University of Virginia. Follow Stan on Twitter @StanHumphries.
Sam Khater, Deputy Chief Economist, CoreLogic
Sam Khater is the Deputy Chief Economist at CoreLogic, America’s largest provider of advanced property and ownership information, analytics and services. He produces original research and commentary on the economy, real estate and housing finance and advises clients, regulators, policy makers and investors. Prior to joining CoreLogic, he was a Sr. Economist at Fannie Mae in the Economics and Housing and Community Development. His responsibilities included real estate and economic forecasts, mortgage and housing finance policy research, corporate and public goal analysis, investment opportunity analysis and neighborhood community development consulting services. Before joining Fannie Mae, he was an Economist at the National Association of Realtors and was in charge of producing economic and housing forecasts. Sam obtained a Master’s in Network Economics from Georgetown University and a Bachelor’s in Finance from George Mason University. He is a member of the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) and American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association (AREUEA).
Randall Lewis, Economic Research Scientist, Netflix
Randall Lewis is an Economic Research Scientist in the Science & Algorithms team at Netflix. As a "big data" econometrician, he combines machine learning and econometrics to develop scalable causal measurement and prediction systems that help humans and machine-learning algorithms make optimal choices. Prior to joining Netflix in 2015, he worked at Google and Yahoo! Research where he studied advertising's impact on human behavior and sought ways to improve the health and efficiency of digital markets. Randall attended MIT as a Presidential Fellow where he earned his PhD in economics. Earlier, he attended BYU as a Hinckley Presidential Scholar and graduated as a valedictorian with a double major in economics and mathematics.
Paul Lilford, Senior Director of Technology and Market Intelligence, Tableau
Paul Lilford is Tableau’s Senior Director of Technology and Market Intelligence. A self-described data enthusiast and geek, Paul has more than 20 years of experience in enterprise performance management (EPM), business intelligence (BI), data warehousing, OLAP, and analytics. He is also an in-demand speaker on analytics and data democratization. Prior to Tableau, Paul was Director of EPM and BI at United Healthcare, where his team rolled out analytics technology to thousands of business users across the enterprise. Paul also spent 10 years at Hyperion Solutions, working with technology including HP, Teradata, Unisys, SPSS, IBM, and others. Paul holds a bachelor’s degree in Science in Business Administration from Northeastern University in Boston. Find Paul on Twitter @Paul_Lilford.
Bill MacMillan, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Prattle
Bill MacMillan is Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Prattle. He has conducted extensive research on government finance that he has presented at Yale, Princeton, and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. His statistical and econometric work has been published in diverse disciplines including political economy, public health, and medicine. His work has also been featured in the Columbia Journalism Review. As a researcher and programmer, Bill has authored original software to estimate spatio-temporal models of trade flows, dynamic discrete choice models of government policy, and hidden-state Markov switching models of exchange rates and policy regimes. He has taught computing, statistics, econometrics and political economy at the University of Michigan and Washington University. He has also worked as a professional data scientist and fraud analyst for several large corporations. Bill holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan as well as a Masters from the University of Iowa and Bachelors from University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.
Sandy Pentland, MIT Media Lab
Professor Alex "Sandy" Pentland directs the MIT Connection Science and Human Dynamics labs and previously helped create and direct the MIT Media Lab and theMedia Lab Asia in India. He is one of the most-cited scientists in the world, and Forbes recently declared him one of the "7 most powerful data scientists in the world" along with Google founders and the Chief Technical Officer of the United States. He has received numerous awards and prizes such as the McKinsey Award from Harvard Business Review, the 40th Anniversary of the Internet from DARPA, and the Brandeis Award for work in privacy. He is a founding member of advisory boards for Google, AT&T, Nissan, and the UN Secretary General, a serial entrepreneur who has co-founded more than a dozen companies including social enterprises such as the Data Transparency Lab, the Harvard-ODI-MIT DataPop Alliance and the Institute for Data Driven Design. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and leader within the World Economic Forum. Over the years Sandy has advised more than 60 PhD students. Almost half are now tenured faculty at leading institutions, with another one-quarter leading industry research groups and a final quarter founders of their own companies. Together Sandy and his students have pioneered computational social science, organizational engineering,wearable computing (Google Glass), image understanding, and modern biometrics. His most recent books are `Social Physics,' published by Penguin Press, and 'Honest Signals', published by MIT Press.
Joe Reisinger, Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer, Premise
Joe Reisinger, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Premise, is an engineer exploring the intersection of econometrics and machine learning. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Texas and spent his academic career building natural language understanding systems at Google Research and IBM T.J. Watson. Prior to co-founding Premise, he was Chief Scientist at Metamarkets.
Dan Restuccia, Chief Analytics Officer, Burning Glass Technologies
Dan Restuccia is Burning Glass’ Chief Analytics Officer, leading Burning Glass’s knowledge architecture and research divisions. Prior to becoming Chief Analytics Officer, Dan served as Burning Glass’ Director of Applied Research. Dan joined Burning Glass following a decade in education reform, driving innovations that improve college and career success for young people. While at Jobs for the Future, a national education reform and advocacy organization, Dan developed partnerships between high schools and colleges to improve college matriculations and graduation rates for low-income and at risk students. He has also served as a middle and high school math teacher. Dan holds a BA in Applied Mathematics and Urban Studies from Brown University.
Nela Richardson, Chief Economist, Redfin
Nela Richardson is Chief Economist at Redfin. Prior to Redfin, she was a Senior Economist with Bloomberg Government. She has also held research economist positions at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies and Freddie Mac. Nela leads the Redfin research team and is a frequent guest expert on housing and economic issues for local and national media.
Roberto Rigobon, Head of the Billion Prices Project, MIT
Roberto Rigobon is the Society of Sloan Fellows Professor of Applied Economics at the Sloan School of Management, MIT, a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a member of the Census Bureau’s Scientific Advisory Committee, and a visiting professor at IESA. Roberto is a Venezuelan economist whose areas of research are international economics, monetary economics, and development economics. Roberto focuses on the causes of balance-of-payments crises, financial crises, and the propagation of them across countries - the phenomenon that has been identified in the literature as contagion. Currently he studies properties of international pricing practices, try to produce alternative measures of inflation, and is one of the two founding members of the Billion Prices Project, and a co-founder of PriceStats. Roberto joined the business school in 1997 and has won three times the "Teacher of the year" award and three times the "Excellence in Teaching" award at MIT. He got his Ph.D. in economics from MIT in 1997, an MBA from IESA (Venezuela) in 1991, and his BS in Electrical Engineer from Universidad Simon Bolivar (Venezuela) in 1984. He is married with three kids.
Sean Rowles, Global Chief Credit Officer, Paypal
Ken Sanford, Analytics Architect and Evangelist, H2O
Ken Sanford is an Analytics Architect and Evangelist at H2O. Ken is a reformed academic economist who likes to empower customers to solve problems with data. Ken’s primary passion is teaching and explaining. He loves being the dumbest person in the room so he surrounds himself with smart people who he can learn from. He likes to simplify and tell stories. Ken has spent time in academia (Middle Tennessee State University, U of Cincinnati, Peace College) consulting (Deloitte) and software development (SAS). He has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Kentucky in Lexington and his work on price optimization has been published in peer-reviewed journals.
Tara Sinclair, Chief Economist, Indeed
Tara Sinclair is Chief Economist at Indeed and an associate professor of economics and international affairs at George Washington University. Her research focuses on modeling, explaining, and forecasting labor market and other macroeconomic trends for different countries. As Indeed's Chief Economist, Tara is developing original research using proprietary Indeed data combined with publicly available data to uncover exclusive insights on the labor market. In addition to her academic work, Tara is frequently invited to brief media on economic and labor trends as well as offer commentary in mainstream media. She has been quoted in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and has appeared on CNN, C-Span, NPR, Fox Business, Bloomberg Radio and TV, and many other local and international news programs.