Ms. Suzanne Downing, Vice President and Client Portfolio Manager, Nuveen Investments, Chicago IL

Topic: “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Municipal Bonds* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)”

Date:  March 13, 2024

Suzanne is a Client Portfolio Manager for Municipal Fixed Income Strategies at Nuveen Asset Management. She supports sales and marketing activity related to all of the firm’s municipal managed money products, including open-end mutual funds, closed-end funds, and privately managed accounts. In this role, she works with portfolio managers to develop and communicate information about the products’ investment teams, process, and performance to institutional and retail audiences. She also helps explain the complexities of the municipal bond market and the benefits of professional municipal bond management to clients. Suzanne began her career at Nuveen in 1990, working in Municipal Underwriting and Trading; Closed End Fund Product Development; and the Global Private Client Group; prior to joining Nuveen Asset Management in 2015. Ms. Downing’s educational background includes Certified Financial Planner (CFP) certification from DePaul University; and an MBA in Global Economics and Marketing from the University of Liverpool, U.K., where she earned the Student of the Year award. Suzanne is an elected Cook County Board Member for her local library; and serves on several community committees. She is also named as a Cambridge “Who’s Who” Among Executive and Professional Women; and a member of the 100 Women in Hedge Funds; and National Association of Professional Women.

Mr. Chris Moody, Journalist and Instructor, Appalachian State University

Topic: “Lessons from a Nomadic Life”

Time:  12 Noon

Date:  January 10, 2024

Chris Moody is an award-winning journalist with 15 years of experience covering politics, technology, culture and religion for digital, print and broadcast outlets. His reporting has been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN Politics, VICE News, Al-Jazeera, Book Forum, The New Republic and more, including hundreds of appearances on television and radio, including MSNBC, CNN, Fox News and NPR.

Dr. Lacy Ford, Emeritus Faculty, History Department, College of Arts & Sciences, University of South Carolina

Topic: “The Modern Southern Economy Revisited: South Carolina As a Test Case”

Time:  12 Noon

Date:  November 15, 2023

Location:  The Palmetto Club

Time: 12:00 pm to 1:30 pm

Location: Palmetto Club. Buffet lunch included (guests/non-members: $30).

Lacy Ford served as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, USC’s largest and oldest college, from July 2016 to December 2020.   Prior to becoming Dean, Ford served as Senior Vice Provost & Dean of Graduate Studies at the USC from 2010-2016. His responsibilities included: faculty development and evaluation, tenure and promotion, hiring and retention, the Graduate School, and Distributed (Distance) Learning, and the SEC’s Academic Leadership Development Program.  From 2007-2010, Ford served as Chair of the Department of History.

Twice a National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellow and once an ACLS Fellow, Ford is the author of Deliver Us From Evil: The Slavery Question in the Old South, published by Oxford University press in 2009 and reviewed in the September 20, 2009 issue of the New York Times Book Review, as well as other works. Deliver Us From Evil also won the 2010 Mary Lawton Hodges prize for best book on the South published in 2009.  In 2008, Ford published “Reconfiguring the Old South: ‘Solving’ the Problem of Slavery, 1787-1838,” in the Journal of American History.  This article was also featured on the “Teaching the JAH” website.

Dr. David Skarbek, Associate Professor of Political Science and Political Economy;  Director, Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, Brown University

Topic: “Prisonomics – Why Prison Gangs Rose to Power”

Time:  12 Noon

Date:  September 22, 2023

David Skarbek is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Political Economy at Brown University, and the inaugural director of the Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. His research examines how extralegal governance institutions form, operate, and evolve. He has published extensively on the informal institutions that govern life in prisons in California and around the globe. His work has appeared in leading journals in political science, economics, and criminology, including in the American Political Science Review, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Journal of Law, Economics & Organization, and Journal of Criminal Justice.

July 19, 2023 Meeting

Topic: “PRIMUM NON NOCERE”

A Pennsylvania native, Dr. Chris Yeakel somehow graduated from Pennsylvania State University with BA and MD degrees.  He discovered the south in 1980, during his intern year in the departments of Medicine and Pediatrics, University of North Carolina Hospitals, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  After that intern year Dr. Yeakel was commissioned by the United States Public Health Service and served two years as a general medical officer living and working on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. While serving the Lakota Tribal members on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation he had an opportunity to combine both his passion for medicine and flying.

In 1983, he returned to southern climes to complete his anesthesiology residency and fellowship (pediatrics and regional anesthesia) at Emory University in Atlanta.  He came to Columbia in 1986 and spent his career since within an anesthesiology group practicing primarily at Richland Hospital (now Prisma Richland).  While his private practice group provided anesthetic care for all specialties, Dr. Yeakel focused his clinical practice upon pediatric anesthesiology including the introduction of regional anesthetic techniques for neonates through teen years.

Professionally, Dr. Yeakel is a diplomate of the American Board of Anesthesiology with sub-specialty certification by that Board in Pediatric Anesthesiology.  Dr. Yeakel has been involved in organized medicine at large throughout his career.  He has served as President of the Columbia Medical Society, on the Executive Committee of the South Carolina Society of Anesthesiologists, as a Director on the National Board of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, and just finished a year serving as the President of the South Carolina Medical Association.

He retired from the practice of anesthesiology at the end of 2020 and now is working as a FAA designated Aviation Medical Examiner in the Southern Region.

May 31, 2023 Meeting

Topic:  The Changing American Workforce

Brian Devine is the president and CEO of Ignite Industrial Professionals, bringing extensive experience and a unique understanding of both the labor needs of companies and the priorities and the preferences of essential front line workers.

Brian started out as a mortgage banker and then took a position at a staffing company, which began a nearly 30-year career in the industry, He led the growth of the largest logistics staffing company in the country, and he started the largest survey of hourly associates in the U.S. He has been on a mission to educate business leaders on ways to attract and retain the best workers in the market, and he often speaks at national and regional conferences on the topic of labor.

March 29, 2023 Meeting:

Topic:  Belgian-US Economic Ties

Mr. Vanderstraeten is the former CEO of Fabrique Nationale based in Columbia, South Carolina and is currently a board member of the Colt CZ Group, Noth America.  He was associated with the FN Herstal Group for over 38 years.  He has an extensive financial background and has held management positions for the corporation in Belgium, Nigeria, Hong Kong and the United States. He holds a Financial Degree from Chambre Belge Des Experts Comptables in Liege, Belgium.

Since 2018 Mr. Vanderstraeten is the honorary consul of Belgium in South Carolina.

January 11, 2023 Meeting:

Topic: How America Innovates

Adam Schickling, CFA, is an economist in Vanguard Investment Strategy Group. He has co-authored research on productivity, demographics, labor markets, and China’s economy.  He joined Vanguard in 2012. Previously, he was a fixed income investment risk analyst in the Risk Management Group.

Mr. Schickling is a CFA® charter holder and holds an M.A. in Economics.

November 16, 2022 Meeting:

Topic:  Taxes and Economic Development in Columbia, SC

Dr. Gunnlaugsson is an economist specializing in statistical analysis and econometric modeling of public finance and taxation policy issues. She began her career with Accenture where she was involved in firm-wide business and technology implementations. She went on to serve as Director of Research and subsequently Chief Economist at the South Carolina Department of Commerce, followed by her role as President of Acuitas Economics. In May, she returned to the Department of Commerce to serve as Chief Information and Data Analytics Officer.

She has done extensive research on public finance, taxation and optimization for long term economic growth, having testified before the 2009 Senate Finance Committee on Unemployment Insurance, the 2010 South Carolina Tax Realignment Commission (TRAC), the 2017 South Carolina House Tax Policy Review Committee, the 2018 Senate Subcommittee for Tax Review and Reform and the 2020 Senate Education Funding Reform Study Committee. Most recently, she has worked with the City of Columbia’s Tax Modernization Committee.

Dr. Gunnlaugsson received her Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Michigan.

September 15, 2022 Meeting:

Topic: The Fed’s Mission Creep

Dr. Thomas Hogan is a senior research faculty at AIER.  He was formerly the chief economist for the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. He has also worked at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, Troy University, West Texas A&M University, the Cato Institute, the World Bank, Merrill Lynch’s commodity trading group and for investment firms in the U.S. and Europe.

Dr. Hogan’s research has been published in academic journals such as the Journal of Macroeconomics and the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking. He has appeared on programs such as BBC World News, Stossel TV, and Bloomberg Radio and has been quoted by news outlets including CNN Business, American Banker, and the National Review. Dr. Hogan earned his Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University and holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in business administration from the University of Texas at Austin.