Diana Furchtgott-Roth

Diana Furchtgott-Roth is Senior Fellow and Director of Economics21 at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and an Adjunct Professor of Economics at George Washington University. She previously served as Chief Economist of the U.S. Department of Labor; Chief of Staff of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers; Deputy Executive Director of the Domestic Policy Council; and Junior Staff Economist at the Council of Economic Advisers. Ms. Furchtgott-Roth’s latest book, Disinherited: How Washington Is Betraying America’s Young, coauthored with Jared Meyer, received the 2016 Sir Antony Fisher International Memorial Award. Her previous books include Women’s Figures: An Illustrated Guide to the Economics of Women in America, and Overcoming Barriers to Entrepreneurship in the United States. Until earlier this year she was a columnist for MarketWatch.com and Tax Notes. Ms. Furchtgott-Roth received her BA in Economics from Swarthmore College and her M.Phil. in Economics from Oxford University. 

Harold Furchtgott-Roth founded Furchtgott-Roth Economic Enterprises in 2003. He frequently comments on issues related to the communications sector of the economy. From 2001-2003, Mr. Furchtgott-Roth was a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where he completed the writing of A Tough Act to Follow, a book about the difficulties implementing the Telecommunications Act of 1996. From 1997 through 2001, Mr. Furchtgott-Roth served as a commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission. In that capacity, he served on the Joint Board on Universal Service. He is one of the few economists to have served as a federal regulatory commissioner, and the only one to have served on the Federal Communications Commission. Before his appointment to the FCC, he was chief economist for the House Committee on Commerce and a principal staff member on the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Earlier in his career, he was a senior economist with Economists Incorporated and a research analyst with the Center for Naval Analyses.

Mr. Furchtgott-Roth is a member of the Washington Legal Foundation’s Legal Policy Advisory Board. He is the coauthor of three books: Cable TV: Regulation or Competition, with R.W. Crandall, The Brookings Institution, 1996; Economics of A Disaster: The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, with B.M. Owen et al, Quorum Books, 1995; and International Trade in Computer Software, with S.E. Siwek, Quorum Books, 1993.

Ed Hearst has a distinguished career in government, law and global business.  Mr. Hearst is Vice President of Buisness Development & Government Relations at Blackberry and a member of the California Bipartisan Commission on Internet Political Activities.   Mr. Hearst is a former Vice President, Worldwide Business Development and Global Trading Web, at business-to-business software company Commerce One.  While at Commerce One, Mr. Hearst founded and served as the first Director General and Secretary of the Global Trading Web Association. Prior to joining Commerce One, Mr. Hearst served as Senior Counsel on the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Commerce, where his fields of responsibility included electronic commerce, telecommunications and international trade.  Mr. Hearst also served as a Senior Attorney at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), a Senior Policy Advisor at the U.S. Department of State, and practiced law at Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue.  Mr. Hearst is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, where he received both his B.A. and J.D.  

Michael Annunziata was born and raised in Long Island, New York, and graduated from Providence College with a degree in Finance.  Following a successfully internship at Massey Knakal Realty Services (now Cushman & Wakefield), Michael began his career in NYC Commercial Real Estate.  To follow a life goal, he transitioned into military service in 2010, earning his commission as a Naval Officer. Upon completion of Officer Candidate School in Newport, RI, he went on to complete two successful sea tours in San Diego, CA.  His last Navy assignment was as course lead and head instructor at the Navy’s Surface Warfare Officer School in Newport, RI.  Michael is excited for the tremendous opportunity to earn his MBA at Marshall and transition back to the Real Estate Industry.

Jeremy Arendt is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Cottonwood Venture Partners (“CVP”), a venture capital firm investing in digital technology companies serving the oil and gas industry.  Mr. Arendt has led several venture capital investments and is actively involved in CVP’s portfolio companies. Prior to CVP, Mr. Arendt was a Director in the investment banking group of Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co. (“TPH”) in Houston, Texas.  TPH is a preeminent energy-focused investment banking firm and widely known in the oil & gas industry as a leader in mergers and acquisitions and technical analysis.  At TPH, Mr. Arendt led over 20 closed M&A transactions totaling over $15 billion of value across the E&P, midstream, and oilfield service sectors. Prior to joining TPH, Mr. Arendt joined the two founding partners of American Residential Properties to launch a real estate private equity fund focused on acquiring and leasing distressed residential real estate.  Mr. Arendt began his career at Franchise Capital Advisors, a boutique investment banking firm in Scottsdale, Arizona, where he advised on lower-middle-market M&A transactions. 

Mr. Arendt holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where he graduated with Honors, and a BS in Finance and a BS in Economics from the W.P.  Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, where he graduated magna cum laude.

Megan Cowett

Brad Headley

Trevar is currently working with the International Affairs Division of the Alcohol and Tobacco Trade and Tax Bureau, within the Treasury Department. After graduating from Cambridge University, in England, he attended law school in California.  During that time, he served as President of his school’s branch of the Federalist Society, spent a semester working for Reagan appointee and Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and graduated in the top 15% of my class.  Despite passing the California Bar Exam, he was not enthused by the combative world of litigation and found a job as an investment advisor for a high net worth family trust in Malibu. Trevar wanted to do something less passive and purely analytical, and instead more active and tangible, which led him to attend business school at Darden. Trevar served as Vice President of the Darden branch of the Adam Smith Society, a highlight of which was traveling to the SALT Conference after winning the Society’s annual marketing award. Following Darden, Trevar earned a Presidential Management Fellowship, a prestigious hiring track into the federal government for recent graduate students. 

Jon Laxmi is a current MBA candidate at NYU Stern School of Business with STEM degrees from NYU. He also serves on the board of the Adam Smith Society at NYU Stern. Professionally, Jon has worked at The White House National Economic Council, NASA and several F500 companies including JPM & NBCUniversal. More recently, he has had the opportunity to work with several startups and VCs, most recently with an AI software company using machine-learning algorithms to predict which bills will pass. 

Vinayak Uppal has spent much of the last ten years working and living across the world, covering four continents and multiple cities. He completed a Master’s Degree in Economics, focusing on international development, from Oxford, and began his career as a civil servant in the fledgling Government of South Sudan. After spending two years enjoying the delights of travel in single engine prop planes and working in a steel container, he moved to the more familiar environs of Delhi, to work with an international development agency. Following this, he moved back to Oxford to work with Oxford Policy Management, a development consulting firm, leading their financial inclusion and private sector development practice. Vinayak is a second year MBA student at Wharton. He spent the summer working with McKinsey at their San Francisco office, focusing on financial institutions. Vinayak is an avid art fan and loves exploring interesting museums, long distance running and travel in strange places, ideally all at the same time.

Andrea Wong has covered the dollar and U.S. Treasury market for Bloomberg since 2013. Her investigative series on the secret Treasury holdings of Saudi Arabia led the U.S. Treasury Department to disclose the kingdom’s data for the first time in four decades. Her work has been widely cited by financial instituions, think tanks, and other publications including Vanity Fair and Financial Times.

A graduate of Hong Kong Baptist University, she joined Bloomberg as an intern in 2010, and was one of the youngest interns ever hired. She started her career moving between Hong Kong and Taiwan, covering everything under the sun, including capital markets, China-Taiwan relations, economic data and presidential elections.

She was chosen as a Knight Bagehot Fellow in 2017, an all-expenses paid program at Columbia University where financial journalists join the Columbia Business School to study finance and economics.

Tim Zuberi is a first-year MBA student at the Kelley School of Business. Prior to MBA, Tim worked as an internal consultant in strategy and investments across multiple industries. During this time, he regularly interacted with board members, CEOs and top management to affect change and create impact for businesses. Some of hiskey workplace accomplishments includes working on an M&A deal for a dairy company, formulating the strategy of a solar energy firm and creating a source- optimization strategy for a food company. Outside of work, Tim has mentored mission-driven startups ranging from healthcare delivery to education and renewable energy.