ADVISORY BOARD

Dr. Rob Johnson
Dr. Rob JohnsonPresident, Institute for New Economic Thinking

Previously, Johnson was a Managing Director at Soros Fund Management where he managed a global currency, bond and equity portfolio specializing in emerging markets. Prior to working at Soros Fund Management, he was a Managing Director of Bankers Trust Company managing a global currency fund.

Johnson served as Chief Economist of the US Senate Banking Committee under the leadership of Chairman William Proxmire (D. Wisconsin). Before this, he was Senior Economist of the US Senate Budget Committee under the leadership of Chairman Pete Domenici (R. New Mexico).

Johnson was an Executive Producer of the Oscar winning documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side, directed by Alex Gibney, and is the former President of the National Scholastic Chess Foundation. He currently sits on the Board of Directors of both the Economic Policy Institute and the Campaign for America’s Future.

Johnson received a Ph.D. and M.A. in Economics from Princeton University and a B.S. in both Electrical Engineering and Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Prof Avinash Persaud
Prof Avinash PersaudFounder & Chairman, Intelligence Capital

He is also a Trustee of the Overseas Development Institute, member of its Audit Committee and Chairman of its Business Partnership Group, as well as being a Trustee of GARP. He is Chair of the Investment Flows Working Party of the Commonwealth Business Council.

In addition to other awards, he is the only individual to win the two major awards in international finance, the Jacques de Larosiere Award and a Bronze Amex Bank Award. He has developed and published original work in the field of Liquidity Black Hole Theory, Investors’ Shifting Appetite for Risk and EMU expectations calculators. Formerly, he has been Global Head of Research at State Street, Head of Currency and Commodity research at J. P. Morgan, Director of Debt Research at UBS and a Visiting Scholar at the IMF

John Kay
John KayEconomist

John has been a Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford since 1970 and has held chairs at London Business School, the University of Oxford, and the London School of Economics. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He has been a member of the Scottish Government’s Council of Economic Advisers and chaired the Review of Equity Markets and Long Term Decision Making which reported to the UK government’s Department of Business, Innovation and Skills.

Following the outcome of the referendum on British membership of the European Union in June 2016, he was appointed a member of the Standing Council on Scotland and Europe appointed by the First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon.

John Kay is also a director of several public and private companies. He is the author of many articles and has written for over 20 years for the Financial Times, where he is a contributing editor. His most recent book, Other People’s Money, was published in 2015 to wide acclaim. John became Commander of the British Empire in the Queen’s New Year Honours List of 2014. He has been elected an honorary fellow of the Society of Investment Professionals and the Chartered Institute of Taxation, and received the Daniel J Forrestal III award for Leadership in Professional Ethics and Standards of Investment Award from the Chartered Financial Analysts Institute. He has been awarded honorary degrees by Heriot Watt University, and his alma mater the University of Edinburgh.

Prof Charles Goodhart
Prof Charles GoodhartDirector of the Financial Regulation Research Programme, London School of Economics

In 1997 he was appointed one of the outside independent members of the Bank of England’s new Monetary Policy Committee until May 2000. Earlier in his career, he had taught at Cambridge and at the LSE. Besides numerous articles, he has written a couple of books on monetary history; a graduate monetary textbook, Money, Information and Uncertainty; two collections of papers on monetary policy, Monetary Theory and Practice (1984) and The Central Bank and The Financial System (1995). He is also an author of a number of books and articles on Financial Stability, on which subject he was Adviser to the Governor of the Bank of England, 2002-2004, and numerous other studies relating to financial markets and to monetary policy and history. In his spare time, he is a sheep farmer (loss-making).

Drummond Pike
Drummond PikeFounder, Tides

Drummond has been responsible for the entire Tides enterprise and through his leadership, Tides has helped increase the capacity and effectiveness of thousands of social change organizations. The Tides organizations’ aggregate annual expenditures have exceeded $200 million since 2007.

Prior to founding Tides, Drummond served as executive director of the Shalan Foundation, an organisation dedicated to economic change and environmental sustainability. Drummond also co-founded and served as associate director for the Youth Project in Washington, D.C., and he was among the original founders of Working Assets (Credo), a telecommunications company dedicated to progressive philanthropy and political activism.

Drummond’s extensive public service work includes membership on the boards of directors of The Environmental Working Group, the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Tides Canada, Sage Centre, Island Press, and the JK Irwin Foundation. Drummond received a Masters of Political Science from the Eagleton Institute at Rutgers University after graduating with Honours from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Vicky Pryce
Vicky PryceEconomist

She had previously been Partner and Chief Economist at KPMG and earlier held chief economist positions in banking and the oil sector. Vicky co-founded GoodCorporation, a company set up to promote corporate social responsibility.

At various stages in her career she has been on the Council of the Royal Economic Society, on the Council of the University of Kent, on the board of trustees at the RSA, on the Court of the London School of Economics, a fellow of the Society of Business Economists, on the Executive Committee and the Council of the IFS, an Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences, a Visiting Professor at the Cass Business School, a Visiting Fellow at Nuffield College, Adjunct Professor at Imperial College and Visiting Professor at Queen Mary, University of London.

She is patron of ‘Pro-bono Economics’ and has served as Master of one of the City of London’s Livery Companies. She sits on the Department for Business Innovation and Skills’ panel monitoring the economy and is on City AM’s Shadow Monetary Policy Committee.

Prof Peter Bofinger
Prof Peter BofingerProfessor for Monetary and International Economics, Würzburg University Member, German Council of Economic Experts Member of Commission on Global Economic Transformation

Dr Bofinger initially began his career in 1978 as an Economist, Sachverständigenrat zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung (German Council of Economic Advisors), Wiesbaden, before moving on in 1981 to become a Lecturer (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter), at the Department of Law and Economics, University of Saarbrücken. Between 1984 and 1990, he was an Economist with the Deutsche Bundesbank. From 1990 until 1992, he was a visiting Professor at the University of Kaierslautern, followed by University of Konstanz and finally the University of Würzburg.
Aside from these positions, Dr Bofinger has also been a Visiting Scholar in the Research Department at the International Monetary Fund and at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. From 2003 until 2004 he was First Vice President of the University of Würzburg. Dr. Bofinger has written many books on economics and monetary economics. He has worked as an advisor for European and International Institutions.

Dr José Antonio Ocampo
Dr José Antonio Ocampo Director, Economic and Political Development Concentration in the School of International and Public Affairs

In 2012–2013 he chaired the panel created by the IMF Board to review the activities of the IMF’s Independent Evaluation Office; in 2008–2010, he served as co-director of the UNDP/OAS Project on “Agenda for a Citizens’ Democracy in Latin America”; and in 2009 a Member of the Commission of Experts of the UN General Assembly on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System.

Prior to his appointment, Ocampo served in a number of positions in the United Nations and the Government of Colombia, most notably as United Nations Under-Secretary General for Economic and Social Affairs; Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC); Minister of Finance and Public Credit, Chairman of the Board of Banco del República (Central Bank of Colombia); Director of the National Planning Department (Minister of Planning); Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, and Executive Director of FEDESARROLLO.

Ocampo has published extensively on macroeconomic theory and policy, international financial issues, economic and social development, international trade, and Colombian and Latin American economic history.

Ocampo received his BA in economics and sociology from the University of Notre Dame in 1972 and his PhD in economics from Yale University in 1976. He served as Professor of Economics at Universidad de los Andes and of Economic History at the National University of Colombia, and Visiting Fellow at Universities of Cambridge, Oxford and Yale. He has received a number of personal honors and distinctions, including the 2012 Jaume Vicens Vives Prize of the Spanish Association of Economic History for the best book on Spanish or Latin American economic history, the 2008 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought and the 1988 “Alejandro Angel Escobar” National Science Award of Colombia.

Dr William R. White
Dr William R. WhiteChairman, OECD Economic and Development Review Committee

William has continued to publish articles on topics related to monetary and financial stability, as well as the process of international cooperation in these areas.

Mr White was presented in September with the 2016 “Adam Smith Prize”, the highest award of the National Association of Business Economists (US). In May of 2015 he was honoured with the “Hans-Moller-Medal” from VAC, the alumni club of political economists at Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich. Prior to that, he received the annual “Prize of the Monetary Workshop in Monetary, Financial and Macro-Prudential Policy “in Frankfurt in May 2014.

Mr White joined the Bank for International Settlements in June 1994 as Manager in the Monetary and Economic Department, and was appointed to the position of Economic Adviser and Head of the Monetary and Economic Department (MED), in May 1995. He oversaw the preparation of the prestigious BIS Annual Report for which he wrote the Introduction and Conclusions. As Head of the MED, he had overall responsibility for the department’s output of research, data and information services, and the organisation of meetings for central bank Governors and staff around the world.

Mr White was also a member of the Executive Committee which manages the BIS. In this capacity, he contributed actively to various internal subcommittees which establish policies to guide the Bank’s overall activities, including those of the Banking Department and Risk Control. He retired from the BIS on 30 June, 2008.

Mr White began his professional career at the Bank of England, where he was an economist from 1969 to 1972. Subsequently he spent 22 years with the Bank of Canada. His first six years at the Bank of Canada were with the Department of Banking and Financial Analysis, first as an economist and finally as Deputy Chief. In1978, Mr White took on different responsibilities as the Deputy Chief of the Research Department and was made Chief of the Department in 1979. He was appointed Adviser to the Governor in 1984 and Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada in September 1988.

In addition to these permanent positions, Mr White spent six months (1985- 86) as a Special Adviser to the Canadian Minister of Finance and six years as a member of Statistics Canada’s Advisory Panel on the National Income Accounts. Since the late 1980s, he has been an active participant in many international committees, including the EPC and WP3 at the OECD, the G-10 Deputies, and the Bellagio Group which brings together senior government officials, central bankers and academics.

Born in Kenora, Ontario, Mr White was educated at the University of Windsor and received his PhD from the University of Manchester in 1969. In addition to his many publications, Mr White speaks regularly to a wide range of audiences on topics related to monetary and financial stability.

Rain Newton Smith
Rain Newton SmithChief Economist, CBI

Rain provided macroeconomic forecasts and analysis on China’s role in the global economy and the development of Asia, helping a range of companies and international financial institutions to expand into new markets and grow their business.

Prior to that, Rain worked in monetary policy and international forecast to the MPC at the Bank of England where she led a team with responsibility for developing a risk assessment framework for the UK financial system.

While at the Bank, she also went on secondment to the International Monetary Fund in Washington D.C. where she was adviser to the UK executive director. In 2010, Rain was selected as one of Management Today’s 35 Women Under 35.

Rain was honoured by the World Economic Forum in 2012 as a Young Global Leader.

Dr Mirjam Staub-Bisang
Dr Mirjam Staub-BisangCEO and Co-Founder, Independent Capital Group AG

Dr. Staub-Bisang holds a PhD degree in law from the University of Zurich and is an attorney-at-law admitted to the Zurich and Swiss bar. She also holds an MBA from INSEAD. Dr. Staub-Bisang is a member of several for-profit and non-profit boards, among which is the MBA for Women Foundation which she founded in 2009. She is a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum.