Financial Access for Immigrants: Learning from Diverse Perspectives - Presenter Biographies
James Ballentine is the director of the Center for Community Development for the American Bankers Association (ABA), since 2002. As the director of the Center, he is part of ABA's Government Relations office and leads a team that manages community development, housing and small business issues for the Association and he serves as one of ABA's leading experts on the issue of predatory lending and emerging market outreach. The Center's staff develops projects and services designed to help lenders find constructive ways to encourage and promote sound lending, equal access to credit and attendant banking services, and investment in minority and low- and moderate-income communities.
Prior to joining the ABA, Mr. Ballentine served as the senior advisor to the Deputy Administrator and later as the associate deputy administrator for Government Contracting and Business Development at the U.S. Small Business Administration, where he was responsible for coordinating the Administration's Small Business Minority Development programs. Prior to the SBA he worked nine years on Capitol Hill as the chief of staff and legislative director (1993 - 1998) to Maryland Congressman Albert Wynn and as legislative director (1989-1992) to New York Congressman Frank Horton.
Michael V. Berry is a senior research analyst managing the Emerging Issues unit of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago's Consumer and Community Affairs division. Prior to joining the Chicago Fed in 1995, Mr. Berry headed the market research group at the RESCORP Companies, a real estate development and consulting organization specializing in community revitalization. From 1983 to 1987, Mr. Berry served various roles in trust and investment banking with a real estate investment subsidiary of American Express, and previously with Howard Bank in Livingston, New Jersey. He is also director and co-founder of the Regional Redevelopment Corporation, a nonprofit housing development organization. Mr. Berry holds a B.A. degree in political science from Susquehanna University and an M.B.A. degree from DePaul University.
Jeremiah P. Boyle is the Wisconsin community affairs program director for the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago's Consumer and Community Affairs division. Mr. Boyle is the project coordinator for the Housing Opportunity Partnership for Southeast Wisconsin, and contributing editor of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago's Profitwise News & Views publication. Before joining the Fed, Mr. Boyle served as assistant commissioner of planning and development for the City of Chicago, economic development coordinator for the Village of Arlington Heights, Illinois, and held several positions with the North River Commission, a non-profit housing and economic development group in Chicago.
Mr. Boyle is former director of the Chicago Association of Neighborhood Development Organizations (CANDO), and currently serves as vice president of both the North River Commission and the Peterson Park Improvement Association, and is a member of the North Park Village Advisory Council.
Mr. Boyle holds a certificate from the American Institute of Certified Planners, a bachelor of arts degree in political science, a master's degree in urban and regional planning from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a master of business administration degree from North Park University in Chicago.
Henry Cisneros is founder and chairman of American CityVista, a joint venture with KB Home, constructing affordable housing in central cities. Cisneros is also chairman of Pacific City Homes, an urban housing fund in California, and Ventana Homes, which builds affordably priced homes in smaller Texas cities. He is founder of American Sunrise, a nonprofit housing corporation in San Antonio.
Previously, Cisneros was president and chief operating officer of Univision Communications in Los Angeles, the Spanish-language broadcaster which has become the fifthmost-watched television network in the nation.
From 1993 to 1997, Cisneros served as the secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. As a member of President Clinton's Cabinet, Secretary Cisneros was assigned America's housing and community development portfolio. He is credited with initiating a major revitalization of many of the nation's public housing developments and with formulating policies which have contributed to today's record homeownership rate. Prior to joining the Cabinet, he was chairman of Cisneros Asset Management Company, a fixed-income money management firm operating nationally.
In 1981, Cisneros became the first Hispanic American mayor of a major U.S. city-San Antonio. During his four terms in office, Cisneros helped rebuild the city's economic base and created jobs through massive infrastructure and downtown improvements, earning for San Antonio a reputation as one of the most progressive cities in the nation in that era. In 1986, he was selected the Outstanding Mayor in the nation by City and State magazine.
Mr. Cisneros has served as president of the National League of Cities, chairman of the National Civic League, deputy chair of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and as a board member of the Rockefeller Foundation. Mr. Cisneros presently serves as chairman of the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and as a board member of KB HOME, Countrywide Mortgage, The Enterprise Foundation, and the New America Alliance.
He holds a bachelor of arts and a master's degree in Urban and Regional Planning from Texas A&M University. He earned a master's degree in Public Administration from Harvard, a doctorate in Public Administration from George Washington University, and has been awarded over 20 honorary doctorates from leading universities across the nation.
Governor Jim Edgar's career in government spans 30 years. He worked in the legislative branch of government for 10 years, which included his election to the Illinois House of Representatives. Governor Edgar served for 20 years in the executive branch of government including 10 years as Secretary of State and 8 years as Illinois' 38th Governor. He was first elected Governor in 1990 and reelected in 1994 by the widest margin in Illinois history.
It has been said that Jim Edgar was the right governor at the right time for Illinois. Governor Edgar inherited a state teetering on bankruptcy and restored fiscal stability and integrity to the state by downsizing and restructuring state government. When he entered office in 1991, the state was 1 billion dollars in debt. When he left office in 1999, the state had a 1.5 billion-dollar surplus.
In addition, Governor Edgar made children a priority. His historic efforts in establishing a minimum foundation level in our public schools has made it possible for children from all areas of the state to receive an adequate education. He also initiated programs that took Illinois from the bottom to the top of the 50 states in the number of adoptions each year.
Upon leaving office, the Chicago Tribune stated that Governor Edgar's "instincts and motives were as sound as those of any governor the state has had." Governor Edgar left the office with the highest approval rating in state history which prompted a Chicago columnist to state that Governor Edgar's popularity in Illinois was "second only to Michael Jordan's."
Governor Edgar is currently a Distinguished Fellow at the University of Illinois' Institute of Government and Public Affairs, and lectures at other colleges and universities throughout the state. In the fall of 1999, the Governor was a resident fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. The Governor also serves on a variety of corporate and civic boards.
Michael Frias is the community affairs officer with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's (FDIC) division of Compliance and Consumer Affairs in the Chicago region. His responsibilities include directing and managing the program's outreach efforts within the region, as well as providing education and training to consumer and community groups and financial institutions to foster understanding of the agency's commitment to compliance with Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and fair lending laws.
Prior to that, Mr. Frias was the fair lending specialist with the FDIC in the Kansas City Region, where he specialized in CRA and fair lending. From 1992 to 1996, Mr. Frias was a compliance examiner in San Francisco, California and was responsible for conducting examinations, investigations, and other activities related to consumer protection, civil rights, and related enforcement responsibilities. Mr. Frias holds a B.S. in accounting from the University of San Francisco.
David Grace is the senior manager of Trade Association Services of the World Council of Credit Unions, Inc. (WOCCU) since July 1998. Mr. Grace is responsible for WOCCU's regulatory monitoring, marketing, educational programs, and financial services including the development of the International Remittance Network (IRnet) service - a mechanism for credit unions to send money transfers to 41 countries. He oversees development of legislative tools for the international credit union movement and has led program activities with credit unions in the United States, Latin America, Caribbean, Asia and Africa. Mr. Grace has been deeply involved in the issue of remittances. He is involved in the briefing of members of the U.S. Congress and Mexican President, Vicente Fox, the advising and writing of legislation in the U.S., and has been interviewed as an expert on the topic by national and international media.
From 1992 - 1998, he was with the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis managing its financial services and information technology units. Mr. Grace holds an M.A. in international affairs from Washington University in St. Louis and graduated with honors from St. Louis University with a B.S. in economics and international business.
Fu Hang is a loan officer/business advisor for the Neighborhood Development Center (NDC) in St. Paul, Minnesota. The Neighborhood Development Center is a non-profit community development agency that provides micro entrepreneurial training, technical assistance, and small business lending to low-income residents and communities of color. Prior to employment at the NDC, Fu Hang was executive director for the Asian Development Corporation, and worked for U.S. Bank Corporation.
E. Martin Heldring is the president and chief executive officer for Harris Bank - Glencoe. Since joining the bank in 1977, he has served in Harris' Asia/Pacific division through 1983 including a year as a foreign exchange trader, in Harris' Singapore branch as manager of Marketing/Credit from 1981 to 1983, in Harris' large corporate middle market group managing highly leveraged transactions and work out situations from 1983 to 1987, and as general manager of Harris Bank International Corporation from 1987 to 1991.
Prior to joining Harris Bank, Mr. Heldring served as general manager of Bank of Montreal's Seoul, Korea branch from 1991 to 1994, led the Bank of Montreal's Financial Institutions group from 1994-1997, and led a strategy group working with Bancomer, Bank of Montreal's Mexican partner from 1997-2002.
Mr. Heldring holds a B.S. in foreign service - international economics from Georgetown University, and an M.B.A. with a major in finance from the University of Chicago.
John A. Herrera is the vice president for Latino Affairs at Self-Help, and cofounder and chairman of The Latino Community Credit Union, in Durham, North Carolina. Mr. Herrera is also the cofounder of several student and nonprofit organizations in the U.S., including the Latino Community Credit Union (Durham), Latino Community Development Center (Durham), El Centro Latino (Carrboro), and El Pueblo, Inc. (Raleigh).
Prior to joining Self-Help, he was program coordinator for outreach at the Center for International Studies at Duke University. He has testified several times before the U.S. Congress on issues that impact immigrants' access to financial institutions. In November 2001 Herrera was elected to the Board of Aldermen in Carrboro, becoming the first Latino immigrant ever elected to municipal office in North Carolina. Mr. Herrera holds a B.S. in general agriculture from the University of Delaware and an M.S. in parks, recreation and tourism management with concentration on community development from North Carolina State University.
Tamar Jacoby, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, writes extensively on immigration, citizenship, ethnicity and race.
Her 1998 book, Someone Else's House: America's Unfinished Struggle for Integration (Basic Books), tells the story of race relations in three American cities-New York, Detroit and Atlanta. The Economist magazine called it "arguably the most important study of race relations in America since Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma was published in 1944." Her newest book, Reinventing the Melting Pot: The New Immigrants and What It Means To Be American, was published by Basic Books in February 2004. A collection of essays by a diverse group of authors - academics, journalists and fiction-writers on both the right and the left - it argues that we as a nation need to find new ways to talk about and encourage assimilation.
Ms. Jacoby's articles and essays have been published in a variety of periodicals, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Financial Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, National Review, The Weekly Standard, Commentary, The New York Review of Books, Dissent and Foreign Affairs.
Before joining the Manhattan Institute, from 1987 to 1989, she was a senior writer and justice editor for Newsweek, where she wrote weekly articles on criminal justice, the Supreme Court and other law-related topics. Between 1981 and 1987, she was the deputy editor of The New York Times op-ed page. Before that, she was assistant to the editor of The New York Review of Books.
In 2002, she co-founded The New Americans Project, a bipartisan group devoted to encouraging immigrants to become citizens.
She is a graduate of Yale University and has taught at Yale, Cooper Union and the New School University. She lives and works in New Jersey.
Bruce Katz is a vice president and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and founding director of the Brookings Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy. The mission of the urban center is to "redefine the challenges facing metropolitan America and promote innovative solutions to help communities grow in more inclusive, competitive, and sustainable ways." Mr. Katz is a frequent writer and commentator on urban and metropolitan issues. He is the co-editor of Redefining Urban and Suburban America (published by Brookings Press in 2003), editor of Reflections on Regionalism (published by Brookings Press in 2000), and regularly contributes to the quarterly Brookings Review. His op-eds and articles have appeared in a wide range of major national and regional newspapers including The Atlantic Monthly, the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, the Boston Globe, the Baltimore Sun and the Hartford Courant.
Before joining Brookings, Mr. Katz served as chief of staff to Henry G. Cisneros, former secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Mr. Katz has also served as the staff director of the Senate Subcommittee on Housing and Urban Affairs. He is a graduate of Brown University and Yale Law School. A native of Brooklyn, New York, Mr. Katz and his wife, Catherine, have two daughters, Lara and Amelia.
Sherrie A. Kossoudji is an associate professor at the School of Social Work, and an adjunct associate professor in the department of economics, at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Her principal research area is immigration. In particular, she has written numerous articles on the legal status of immigrant workers in the United States, the incentives to cross the border illegally, and the wages and jobs of women and men who work in the United States without authorization. She has also written on numerous labor issues concerning women. Much of this work focuses on gendered differences in economic outcomes for workers at the margins of society. Her other areas of research/scholarly interest are labor and social welfare policy, and biotechnology and the pricing of human components.
Dr. Kossoudji received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and a B.A. in international studies and Latin American studies from Miami University at Oxford, Ohio.
B. Lindsay Lowell is director of policy studies for the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University. He was previously director of research at the Congressionally appointed Commission on Immigration Reform where he was also assistant director for the Mexico/U.S. Binational Study on Migration. He was also research director at the Pew Hispanic Center of the University of Southern California, a labor analyst at the U.S. Department of Labor, and has taught at Princeton University and the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Lowell recently co-edited Sending Money Home: Hispanic Remittances and Community Development, and he has published over 100 articles and reports on his research interests in immigration policy, labor force, economic development, and the global mobility of the highly skilled. He received his Ph.D. in sociology as a demographer from Brown University.
James P. Maloney is the chairman of the board of Mitchell Bank and president of the Mitchell Bank Holding Corporation. Mr. Maloney spearheaded the Bank's outreach to the Latino community, which included multiple partnerships with religious, civic and social institutions related to banking, mortgage and homeownership issues. He has been actively involved in outreach to the unbanked Latino community and has directed the establishment of Cardinal Bank, a full service branch of Mitchell Bank within the dominant high school in the area. He is one of the original members of the New Alliance Task Force, established by the Consulate of Mexico and the FDIC as a broad based coalition of bankers, community based organizations, and government agencies whose mission is to provide immigrants with financial education and support services to improve their access to the U.S. banking system. In addition, Mr. Maloney has been a practicing attorney for over 29 years. He holds a B.A. degree, magna cum laude, from Marquette University, and received his Juris Doctor, cum laude, from Marquette University Law School in 1974. He was admitted to the bar in 1974, and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
David Marzahl is the executive director of the Center for Economic Progress in Chicago, Illinois. The Center is a statewide and national advocacy and service organization that seeks to increase economic opportunities for low-income families, children and individuals by improving access to public, private and non-profit programs and services. The Center operates the Tax Counseling Project, the nation's largest free, community-based tax preparation program. The Center also provides a range of other programs and services including financial education, legal and technical assistance, and advocacy.
Prior to joining the Center in 1998, Mr. Marzahl was the founding director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant & Refugee Rights, a statewide coalition of organizations promoting the rights of immigrants and refugees. He has worked in the Chicago non-profit community since 1981, as a community organizer, outreach worker and activist seeking to advance opportunities for economically and politically disadvantaged persons. Mr. Marzahl has a master's degree in political economy from Northwestern University.
Pyong Gap Min is professor of sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His areas of research are immigration, ethnic identity, ethnic business, religion, and gender issues, with a special focus on Asian Americans. He is the author of Ethnic Business Enterprise: Korean Small Business in Atlanta (1988), Caught in the Middle: Korean Merchants in America's Multiethnic Cities (1996, the winner of two national book awards), and Changes and Conflicts: Korean Immigrant Families in New York (1998). He is the editor or co-editor of five books, including Mass Migration to the United States: Classical and Contemporary Periods (2002). In addition, he is author or co-author of over 60 articles and book chapters, sixteen of which focus on Korean and other immigrant entrepreneurship.
Nina E. Olson is the National Taxpayer Advocate and serves as an advocate for taxpayers to the IRS and Congress. She leads the Taxpayer Advocate Service, a nationwide organization of more than 2,000 taxpayer advocates who help taxpayers resolve problems, work with the IRS to correct systemic and procedural problems, and develop legislative proposals to reduce taxpayer burden.
She was the founder and executive director of The Community Tax Law Project, the first independent 501(c)(3) low-income taxpayer clinic in the United States. She served as the chair of the American Bankers Association (ABA) section of Taxation Low Income Taxpayers Committee as well as the Pro Se/Pro Bono Task Force of the ABA Tax Section's Court Procedure Committee. In addition, Ms. Olson has served as chair of the Virginia State Bar's Special Committee on Access to Legal Services. Ms. Olson is an attorney licensed in Virginia and North Carolina.
Manuel Orozco is currently senior researcher at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University, and chair of Central America and the Caribbean at the United States Foreign Service Institute. He was project director of Central America (and now a consultant) for the Inter-American Dialogue. Dr. Orozco was visiting assistant professor of Political Science at the University of Akron, Ohio. He has also been a researcher for the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute working on issues related to migration, ethnicity, international relations, and their implications for the United States. In addition to his academic work, he has worked as a policy consultant for various organizations in Central America, the United States, and South Africa developing programs on democracy and governance issues, as well as on migration and remittances. He has also taught International Relations in Costa Rica and served in various boards in Nicaragua. His areas of interest include Central America, globalization, democracy, migration, conflict in war torn societies, and minority politics.
Dr. Orozco also writes a bi-weekly column in Confidencial magazine published in Nicaragua. His most recent publications include "Worker remittances in International Scope", March 2003, "The Impact of Migration in the Caribbean and Central American Region" FOCAL, Canada, 2003 "Globalization and Migration" in Latin American Politics and Society Summer 2002, "International Norms and Mobilization for Democracy", 2002, "The Marketplace of Remittances and its Changing Dynamics" and "Latino Hometown Associations as Agents of Development in Latin America" in Sending Money Home: Hispanic Remittances and Community Development, De la Garza, Rodolfo, Lindsay Lowell, Rowman, and Littlefield, 2002, "Boundary disputes in Central America" Pensamiento Propio July-December 2001. Dr. Orozco holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Texas at Austin, a master's in public administration and Latin American Studies, and a B.A. in international relations from the National University of Costa Rica.
Pia Orrenius is a regional economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Her specialties are labor economics and econometrics. Her research focuses on Mexico-U.S. migration, with emphasis on the role of U.S. immigration policy on illegal immigration. Dr. Orrenius has also written extensively on U.S.-Mexico trade and border issues. She holds a B.A. in economics and Spanish from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and earned a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Los Angeles.
Una Okonkwo Osili is an assistant professor of economics at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, and associate faculty at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. Her main areas of research include the economics of developing countries and immigrant assimilation in the United States. She is currently conducting research on immigrant assimilation in financial markets and charitable giving in the U.S. She has received research grants from the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Ford Foundation. Dr. Osili has served on the International Scientific Panel for the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa/Macarthur Foundation Real Economies of Africa program. She received her bachelor's degree in economics with honors from Harvard University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from Northwestern University.
Anna Paulson is the senior economist and manager of the Consumer Issues Research group in the Consumer and Community Affairs division at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Her research focuses on how households cope with risk and incomplete financial markets. She has studied the influence of financial constraints on entrepreneurship, households' use of migration and remittances to cope with risk, and the extent that country of origin institutions shape immigrant financial decisions in the U.S. Her work examines data from the U.S., Mexico and Thailand. Prior to coming to the Fed, she was a member of the Finance Department at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Ms. Paulson holds a B.A. in economics from Carleton College and a Ph.D. in economics from the University Chicago.
Alice D. Perez joined U.S. Bank in 1995, and is vice president and leader of its national Hispanic Banking initiatives. In her role, she guides U.S. Bank in its decisions to effectively serve and meet the unique financial services needs of high-growth Hispanic markets, coordinates the bank's national outreach, and partners with other organizations in order to provide enhanced access to financial services to the greater hispanic community.
Ms. Perez also serves as chair of the Sacramento Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, one of California's most influential Hispanic small business trade associations. She is a founding member and chair of the northern California affiliate of the political action committee known as Hispanas Organized for Political Equality (HOPE-PAC). Ms. Perez serves on the corporate advisory boards of the California Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce based in Washington, DC. She is an assistant district governor for Rotary District 5180 and is past president of the Rotary Club of Roseville-Sunrise.
Ms. Perez is active on Capitol Hill where she has served as an industry expert on legislative and regulatory issues that affect both financial institutions and the consumers they serve. In October, she provided expert testimony before the Committee on Financial Services of the U.S. House of Representatives. Her testimony was on behalf of the Consumer Bankers Association and focused on "Remittances: Reducing Costs, Increasing Competition, and Broadening Access to the Market." She is a principal organizer and strategist for the access-to-capital initiative known as ¡Capital! This historic initiative is a national partnership between the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and U.S. Bank designed to lend more than $1 billion over five years to Chamber members while providing access to capital for business owners, and an opportunity to generate over $7 million in funding for local chambers.
Ms. Perez is a graduate of California State University where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in finance.
Norma Polanco has been at the helm of the Humboldt Park Economic Development Corporation (HPEDC) since late 1997, where she has partnered with a number of organizations to create unique economic development opportunities for Humboldt Park residents. These opportunities have included an annual job fair, financial literacy workshops, job training programs, and the North Avenue Merchants Association, which promotes planned retail attraction.
Ms. Polanco worked in Uzbekistan for several years for a non-governmental organization dedicated to economic reform in Central Asia. She works with varied organizations and sits on the board of CAN-TV, the Chicago Jobs Council, the Chicago Foundation for Women, and is the Vice-Chair of the Erie Family Health Center. Ms. Polanco holds a B.A. in English from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), and a master's in urban planning from the UIC College of Urban Planning and Policy.
Most recently, Ms. Polanco has accepted a position as a Community Affairs Officer with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in Cleveland, Ohio. In this position, Ms. Polanco will continue to partner with organizations and financial institutions to promote access to underserved communities.
Raul I. Raymundo is chief executive officer and co-founder of The Resurrection Project (TRP), a non-profit community development corporation. Founded by a coalition of six Catholic churches in 1990, TRP's mission is to build relationships and challenge people to act on their faith and values to create healthy communities through organizing, education and community development. TRP has received numerous awards, including the Sara Lee Spirit Award (1999), BP Amoco's Leader Award (1999) and the Fannie Mae Foundation's Sustained Excellence Award (1998) for its outstanding accomplishments in affordable housing and community development. Prior to joining TRP, Mr. Raymundo completed one year of graduate studies in public policy at the University of Chicago and worked as a community organizer for the Interfaith Community Organization that helped to create The Resurrection Project.
In 2000 Raul Raymundo was recognized by Chicago Magazine as one of six Chicagoans of the Year for his outstanding leadership and civic engagement. Mr. Raymundo is currently a trustee for Cristo Rey Jesuit High School and a member of the Executive Council of Chicago's Metropolis 2020. He also serves on several boards, including WBEZ 91.5 FM Public Radio and Chicago Metropolitan Development Association. Mr. Raymundo received a B.A. in sociology from Carleton College.
Sherrie L.W. Rhine joined the Office of Regional and Community Affairs at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York as a senior economist in 2003. Her research interests include consumer access to financial services and credit, homeownership, asset accumulation and wealth building, small business financing, community economic development and financial education. From 1996 to 2003, Sherrie was a senior economist and manager of the Consumer Issues Research group at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
Prior to her employment at the Fed, she worked in academia for 10 years and in international tax consulting at a major accounting firm for several years. Her work has been published in numerous Federal Reserve System publications and in academic journals including the Contemporary Economic Policy, Financial Planning and Counseling Journal, Advancing the Consumer Interest, American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Consumer Education, Journal of Human Resources, Health Economics, Applied Economics, Journal of Risk and Insurance, and the Economics of Education Review. Ms. Rhine earned a B.S. from the University of South Florida and a Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina.
Barbara J. Robles is an assistant professor at Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. She teaches undergraduate and graduate classes on Latinos and Public Policy Issue, Latinos and Financial Services, Wealth Inequality, and Family and Community Asset Building Policies. She also teaches graduate classes on Public Financial Management, Microeconomics for Policy Analysis and Applied Econometrics. Her published research focuses on Microenterprise along the U.S.-Mexico Border, credit and loan accessibility issues in U.S. manufacturing, women's status in the U.S. economy, Latina entrepreneurial behavior, and women and minority small business and micro-enterprise activities. Her current research interests center on financial services accessibility, the Earned Income Tax Credit and financial asset accumulation as well as broader wealth issues for the Latino community in the U.S. with specific focus on the U.S.-Mexico Border Economy.
Dr. Robles is currently working on a book concerning Latinos, cultural capital and asset building policies. She is a member of Hispanic Business, Inc., Board of Economists, and has consulted for U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Legislative Strengthening Initiatives in El Salvador and Guatemala, and for the State Department on NAFTA's impact on small business development along the U.S.-Mexico Border. She formerly worked as an economist/revenue estimator, scoring tax legislation for the Joint Committee on Taxation, U.S. Congress. Dr. Robles received her doctorate in economics from the University of Maryland-College Park with fields in econometrics and monetary policy.
Donna Rockin is the director at the Duman Microenterprise Center and Loan Fund, a division of the Jewish Vocational Service (JVS) of Chicago. JVS Chicago established the Duman Microenterprise Center and Loan Fund in 2001 to address the needs of current and future entrepreneurs by providing educational services, entrepreneurial support, and access to capital. Ms. Rockin has over thirty years of product development, marketing and merchandising experience in the for-profit sector. For more than 13 years she owned and operated Rockin Enterprises, Inc., a full-service corporate communications firm specializing in creating marketing materials for the business-to-business sector. She is an adjunct marketing professor at Robert Morris College.
Ms. Rockin earned a B.A. degree from Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, in business/economics and Spanish. She earned an M.B.A. in marketing from Loyola University-Chicago.
Carlos M. Sada Solana has served as Consul General of Mexico in Chicago since July, 2000. He served as Consul General of Mexico in San Antonio, Texas, from 1995 to 2000; Mayor of the City of Oaxaca, México from 1993 to 1995; Consul General of Mexico in Toronto, Canada from 1989 to 1992; and Secretary of Social and Economic Development for the State of Oaxaca from 1986 to 1989.
Consul General Sada holds a degree in industrial engineering from Iberoamerican University at Mexico City. He has completed graduate studies at the University of Newcastle, in England and at the University of Deft, in Holland. The Consul General has completed postgraduate studies at the Public Administration Institute of The Hague, in Holland. He serves on the board of directors of numerous civic, business, and educational organizations.
Andrew I. Schoenholtz is the deputy director of the Georgetown University Institute for the Study of International Migration (ISIM), where he directs studies on a range of international migration matters, including the causes and potential responses to population movements, immigration and refugee law and policy, comparative migration, the integration of immigrants into their host societies, and the effects of international migration on social relations, economics, demographics, foreign policy and national security. He has worked closely with the Fannie Mae Foundation in identifying and analyzing best practices to overcome the major barriers to immigrant homeownership. In 2001, he co-authored a handbook, Reaching the Immigrant Market: Creating Homeownership Opportunities for New Americans. In 2003, he completed a strategic business planning workbook, aimed at training financial institutions in these best practices, which was published by the American Bankers Association and Georgetown University.
Previously, he served as deputy director of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, where he directed the analysis of immigration policies and preparation of reports to Congress detailing Commission findings and recommendations. Dr. Schoenholtz directed Commission fact-finding missions in Haiti, Cuba, Germany, Croatia and Bosnia to study root causes, refugee protection and long-term solutions to mass migration emergencies. He briefed Members of Congress and staff on policy issues related to refugees and immigrants, testified at public hearings, and represented the Commission at national conferences and symposia. Prior to his current position, Dr. Schoenholtz practiced immigration, human rights and international law with the Washington, D.C. law firm of Covington & Burling. Dr. Schoenholtz holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a Ph.D. from Brown University.
Audrey Singer is a Visiting Fellow at the Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy at the Brookings Institution. Her areas of expertise include demography, international migration, immigration policy, and urban and metropolitan change. Her research focuses on the economic, social, and political incorporation of immigrants. Her current research is on contemporary immigrant settlement and emerging gateways in the United States, including Washington, DC.
Prior to joining Brookings, Singer was an associate in the International Migration Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She has also held a faculty position in the department of demography at Georgetown University, and was an analyst at the U.S. Department of Labor.
Singer earned a Ph.D. in sociology, with a specialization in demography, from the University of Texas at Austin. She has an M.A. in sociology also from the University of Texas at Austin and a B.A. from Temple University. She conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Chicago.
Roberto Suro is director of the Pew Hispanic Center, a Washington-based research and policy analysis organization. The Center is a project of the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication where Suro is on the faculty as a research professor. The Center was founded in July, 2001 with support from the Pew Charitable Trusts. Through public opinion surveys and a variety of research projects, the Center serves as a source of non-partisan information on the rapid growth of the Latino population and its implications for the nation as a whole.
A former journalist, Mr. Suro has nearly 30 years of experience writing on Hispanic issues and immigration. He is author of Strangers Among Us: Latino Lives in a Changing America, (Vintage) as well as numerous reports, articles and other publications regarding the growth of the Latino population. During his career in journalism Mr. Suro worked for TIME magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post and other publications. He worked extensively in Washington, did tours as a domestic correspondent in Chicago and Houston and was posted as a foreign correspondent in Latin America, Europe and the Middle East. He received a B.A. from Yale University and a M.S. from Columbia University.
Jennifer Tescher is the director of the Center for Financial Services Innovation, an initiative of ShoreBank Advisory Services (SAS), the research and consulting arm of ShoreBank Corporation. Shorebank Corporation is the nation's leading community development bank holding company. The Center was launched in 2004 to bring together diverse members of the financial services industry to develop, test, and implement new ways of building long-term, profitable relationships with low-income consumers.
Prior to joining SAS in 2002, Ms. Tescher spent six years at ShoreBank in a variety of capacities, focused primarily on the development and implementation of new financial products and services. She oversaw the operation of ShoreBank's Individual Development Account (IDA) initiative, which she developed and launched in 1998, and she has worked with institutions nationwide to replicate the program.
Ms. Tescher is a director of the Center for Economic Progress, a member of the steering committee of Financial Links for Low-Income People (FLLIP), and is actively engaged in discussions around asset building at both the state and federal levels. She has undergraduate and graduate degrees in journalism from Northwestern University and a public policy degree from the University of Chicago.
Maude Toussaint-Comeau is an economist in the Consumer Issues Research group in Consumer and Community Affairs Division at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. She has conducted several studies on issues of economic adjustment of immigrants, and has analyzed the geographic concentration of various immigrant groups. Ms. Toussaint-Comeau has authored and co-authored several papers on the use of formal and informal financial markets by minority groups as well as the use of alternative financial services, such as check-cashing outlets and payday loan companies. Her current research agenda focuses on immigrant utilization of financial services, homeownership attainment of Hispanics, immigrant/ethnic self-employment, and financial literacy. Prior to her employment at the Fed, she taught economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She was also the recipient of a fellowship by the Social Science Research Council for her dissertation work on labor market earnings and the location of immigrants in the United States and Canada.
Her papers have been published in Contemporary Economic Policy, Economic Perspectives, Fed Letter, Consumer Interest Annual, the 2001 and 2003 Community Affairs Conferences of the Federal Reserve System proceedings, Advancing the Consumer Interest, and the Journal of Consumer Education. Ms. Toussaint-Comeau holds a B.A. in economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, an M.S. in economics from Temple University, and a Ph.D. degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Yman Huang Vien is chair of American Metro Bank. She emigrated to the United States in 1978 by way of Malaysia as a refugee from Vietnam. Ms. Vien helped Vietnamese refugees find employment in Chicago through her work at Jewish Vocational Services, worked for Madison Bank & Trust, and was employed at two other community banks before joining American Metro as executive vice president in 1998. She took over as president and CEO of American Metro in March 2000 and within a year led the bank to post its first profit since being founded in 1997. She was appointed chairman of the board in 2001.
Ms. Vien is one of the original founders and currently on the Board of Directors of the Chinese Mutual Aid Association. She was executive director of the association from 1994-1998. She was also elected as the Outstanding Young Woman of America in 1994, in the top "100 Women Making a Difference" in Today's Chicago Woman in 1996, a recipient of the Athena award in 2000, recipient of the Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White's Business Excellence Award in 2002, and recipient of the Horatio Alger Award and an honoree of the Immigrant Achievement Award of the American Immigration Law Foundation in 2003.
Ms. Vien earned her undergraduate degree in business administration from Loyola University-Chicago and completed a graduate banking program at the University of Wisconsin.
John C. Weicher is assistant secretary for Housing/Federal Housing Commissioner at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Prior to this appointment, he was director of Urban Policy Studies at the Hudson Institute. Dr. Weicher has held policy positions at HUD in two previous administrations. He was assistant secretary for Policy Development and Research for Secretary Jack Kemp, and chief economist for Secretary Carla Hills. He has also served as chief economist at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. Mr. Weicher was appointed by Congress to the Millennial Housing Commission in September 2000. He participated in three previous housing commissions, including the Secretary's Advisory Committee on Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Housing in 1990-1991, the President's Commission on Housing in 1981, and the National Housing Policy Review in 1973. He is the author of 12 books and numerous scholarly and popular articles on housing and urban issues.
Mr. Weicher has been a professor of economics at Ohio State University. He has held the F.K. Weyerhaeuser Chair in Public Policy Research at the American Enterprise Institute, he was director of the Housing Markets Division at the Urban Institute, and was president of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association. In 1993 he received the Association's award for career achievement. He was a member of the Committee on Urban Policy of the National Academy of Sciences and the Advisory Committee on Population Statistics of the U.S. Census Bureau. Dr. Weicher holds an A.B. from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago.
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