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.

January 29, 2020 Meeting:

Topic: What is Evolutionary Psychology …and Why Should We Care?

Dr. Debra Lieberman  is  an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Miami. Her research aims to understand how evolution has shaped the social mind. To this end Dr. Lieberman applies theoretical tools from evolutionary biology to develop hypotheses regarding function, generates information-processing models that specify how the functional mechanism operates, and then empirically tests the validity of these models. Dr. Lieberman studies a range of phenomena including kinship, altruism, sexuality, disgust, morality, and, gratitude.

December 11, 2019 Meeting:

Topic: Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism

Ronald J. Pestritto is graduate dean and professor of politics at Hillsdale College, where he teaches political philosophy, American political thought, and American politics. Dr. Pestritto holds the Charles and Lucia Shipley Chair in the American Constitution. He serves as a senior fellow of the College’s Allan P. Kirby Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship. Dr. Pestritto has published seven books, including Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism and American Progressivism: A Reader. Among his other books are an edited collection of Wilson’s speeches and writings, Woodrow Wilson: The Essential Political Writings, and Founding the Criminal Law: Punishment and Political Thought in the Origins of America.

Dr. Russell S. Sobel is a Professor of Economics & Entrepreneurship at The Citadel in the Baker School of Business, and a Visiting Fellow at the South Carolina Policy Council. Dr. Sobel has authored or co-authored over 200 books and articles, including a nationally-best-selling college Principles of Economics textbook. His research has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, US News and World Report, Investor’s Business Daily, and The Economist Magazine, and he has appeared on CNBC, Fox News, CSPAN, NPR, and the CBS Evening News.

He serves on the editorial board for three academic journals, and on the advisory board for four university centers. He has won numerous awards for both his teaching and his research, including the 2008 Sir Anthony Fisher Award for best state policy publication of the year. His recent research focuses on economic policy and entrepreneurship.

Dr. Sobel is a native of Charleston, South Carolina. He earned his Bachelor’s degree in business economics from Francis Marion College in 1990, and his Ph.D. in economics from Florida State University in 1994.

Dr. Sobel was the fifth speaker of the 2019 season and spoke to the CEC on Thursday November 7, 2019. His topic was entitled “Creative Destruction, Entrepreneurship, & Discovery”.

Ted’s knowledge of finance, policy and government stems from his 16-year overseas career in finance and management. As the Head of Corporate Banking and a management member of Citibank Handlowy in Poland, he advised the government on financial restructurings that continued the liberalization of the nation’s economy. In his Treasury roles in both Poland and Mexico, Ted managed multi-billion dollar balance sheets and Sales and Trading businesses, which gave him hands-on experience in budgeting and crisis management.

After returning to the U.S., Ted shifted to public policy, where he spent six years as Vice President of Policy and Spokesman at the Illinois Policy Institute. In that role he developed a knowledge of the intricacies of state and local policy failures and gained extensive media exposure.

Ted received his master’s degree in public policy from the University of Chicago, an MBA in finance from the Wharton School, and his bachelor’s degree in management from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Ted was the fourth speaker of the 2019 season and spoke to the CEC on Wednesday July 17, 2019. His topic was entitled “Why Your Pension is Doomed”.

Romina Boccia, a leading fiscal and economic expert at The Heritage Foundation, is director of the think tank’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget. Boccia leads a team of experts covering fiscal policy, Social Security, pension reform, and workforce issues such as the gender wage gap and workplace benefits policy. She often advises members of Congress, the administration and their staffs on economic and fiscal policy issues, and she has testified before congressional committees in the House and Senate. She’s the editor of Heritage’s flagship budget proposal, The Blueprint for Balance and leads the organization’s project on the future of work.

Romina was the third speaker of the 2019 season and spoke to the CEC on Wednesday May 8, 2019. Her topic was entitled “The Most Predictable Crisis in US History: The Causes, Costs, and Consequences of the U.S. Debt”

Jody W. Lipford is Professor of Economics at Presbyterian College in Clinton, SC. His research interests span from environmental economics to public finance to sports economics, and he has published in the journals Public Finance Review, The Independent Review, The Journal of Sport, and Political Economy in the Carolinas. In 2008 he won the Templeton prize for Article of the Year in The Journal of Private Enterprise, and in 2012 he won Presbyterian College’s award for Faculty Scholarship. He served as visiting scholar at the Property and Environmental Research Center in 2003, and he conducted the research for this presentation while visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Free Enterprise at Western Carolina University.

Jody was the second speaker of the 2019 season and spoke to the CEC on Wednesday March 6, 2019. His topic was entitled “The Political Economy of Resource Misallocation in the Energy Sector: A Case Study of South Carolina’s V.C. Summer Nuclear Project.”