
SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES

He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Minnesota in 1980 specializing in monetary economics and econometrics. He was formerly a professor of Economics at the University of Southern California and has held executive positions with McDonnell Douglas, FlightSafety International, and FlightSafety Boeing during a fifteen-year span in the aviation business. He also held a position with the Federal Reserve Board of Governors developing forecasting tools, and has advised banks, investors and financial institutions.
From 2000 to 2006, he was the Managing Principal of Deep Blue Economics, a consulting firm he founded. He has been the recipient of the Korda Fellowship, USC Outstanding Teacher, India Chamber of Commerce Jubilee Lecturer, and he is a Fulbright Scholar. He has published over 100 scholarly and popular articles on monetary economics, economic forecasting and analysis, labor economics, and industrial organization and he is the author of two books on monetary economics and exchange rates.

In March 2005, he retired from Lehman Brothers where he was Managing Director and Head REIT analyst. From 2001-04 he was voted on the Institutional Investor All Star Teams including First Team in 2002. Prior to joining Lehman Brothers in 2000 he was a Member and Senior Vice President at Ulysses Management LLC (1998-99) an investment manager of a private investment partnership and an offshore corporation whose total investment capital approximated $1 billion at the end of 1999.
From 1986-1997, Mr. Shulman was employed by Salomon Brothers Inc in various capacities. He was Director of Real Estate Research from 1987-91 and Chief Equity Strategist from 1992-97. In the latter capacity he was responsible for developing the Firm’s overall equity market view and maintaining the Firm’s list of recommended stocks. Mr. Shulman was widely quoted in the print and electronic media and he coined the terms “Goldilocks Economy” and “New Paradigm Economy”. In 1991, he was named a Managing Director and in 1990 he won the first annual Graaskamp Award for Excellence in Real Estate Research from the Pension Real Estate Association.
Prior to joining Salomon Brothers Inc., he was Vice President and Director of Research Planning at TCW Realty Advisors in Los Angeles. Earlier in his career Mr. Shulman was an academic. He was an Associate Professor of Management and Economics at the University of California at Riverside and Financial Economist at the UCLA Business Forecasting Project. In 2017, the David Shulman Endowed Excellence in Teaching Award Fund was established by a former student of his.
A graduate of Baruch College (1964), Mr. Shulman received his Ph.D. (1975) with a specialization in Finance and a M.B.A. (1966) from the UCLA Graduate School of Management. He is married and has three grown children.

He received his bachelor’s degree in finance from National Taiwan University in 1995 and was an analyst in Fubon Financial Holding in Taipei from 1997 to 2000. In 2006, he received his Ph.D. degree in economics from the University of Washington where he was also an economics instructor and won two distinguished teaching awards. In 2006, he worked for the Frank Russell Investment Group for Treasury and corporate yields modeling and forecasting. From 2006 to 2011, he served as an assistant and an associate professor of economics at Winona State University where he taught courses including forecasting methods, managerial economics, international economics, and macroeconomics. Currently, he teaches business forecasting courses at UCLA Anderson School of Management and UCLA Extension.

"Technology advances are creating new business opportunities and disrupting existing business models, enabling economic growth potential we've never seen before," says Blevins. "Today's management leadership must be willing to embrace the rapid pace of change and drive faster innovation. Through an incredible combination of research and adjunct professors, we offer a variety of courses, seminars, workshops, executive programs and industry engagement events that prepares our students for the challenges they face."
Blevins' work experience includes roles at Deloitte Consulting, Microsoft, Oracle and Shell Oil, where he held a variety of technology and management positions based in Houston, Dallas, New York, Miami, London and Los Angeles. He provides consulting services to the technology, telecommunications, media/entertainment, financial services, energy, CPG, health care, manufacturing and automotive industries and the public sector. He has expertise in strategy development, business-technology alignment, framework creation, venture capital investment decisions and new business model creation. Blevins speaks at academic and industry events covering technology-driven market changes, technology management leadership and other topics.
Blevins is the founder of Navigation Pointe, which provides advisory services and venture capital funding to the emerging technologies industry. He has a B.S. in civil engineering with heavy concentration in speech communications from the University of Alabama, as well as an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Ev led CCLP’s work on civic technology and was the principal investigator for the 2015 report, Empowering the Public Through Open Data. Ev’s other research at USC included the Project on Presidential Primaries Reform and an initiative on mobile phones for public service, and he co-authored the 2012 report, Technology and Human Trafficking: The Rise of Mobile and the Diffusion of Technology-Facilitated Trafficking.
From 2007-2010, he was a co-founder of two award-winning technology start-ups in New York City and a producer of short documentaries for Current TV. More recently, he was a research assistant studying WikiLeaks at POLIS, the media and society think tank at the London School of Economics. Prior to his roles in start-ups and academia, Ev worked for the Washington, D.C.-based Democracy Alliance, where he developed investment strategies for building non-profit infrastructure.
He holds a joint M.Sc./M.A. in Global Media and Communications from the London School of Economics and the University of Southern California, and a B.A. in Communication from the University of Pennsylvania.
Ev can be reached at eboyle@usc.edu or @evboyle on Twitter.

Mr. Chun is charged with growing a prosperous economy; specifically creating jobs, attracting investment and increasing tourism. He oversees six departments totaling over 6,000 employees and a combined budget of $8.6 billion: Department of City Planning, Department of Building & Safety, Los Angeles World Airports, Port of Los Angeles, Department of Convention & Tourism Development, and the Economic & Workforce Development Department. He has worked on key initiatives for the Mayor such as raising the minimum wage, cutting the business tax, forming the Mayor's Tech Council and launching the Evolve Entertainment Fund.
Before joining the Mayor’s Office in 2013, Mr. Chun was Vice President at Capri Global, a private equity and investment manager with almost $4 billion of assets under management. He was responsible for sourcing and underwriting acquisitions, asset management and equity investment activities including origination, direct and joint venture investing.
Prior to Capri, he was at CRA/LA and at CBRE’s consulting group (NYSE: CBRE).
A native Angeleno, Mr. Chun holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics at Wesleyan University.

Austin is committed to encouraging underrepresented minorities to pursue careers in tech and entrepreneurship. He is an active volunteer in various local youth entrepreneurship programs and is on the Board of HBCU.vc and the Library Foundation of Los Angeles. He received his MBA from NYU Stern and his BA from Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA.



Most recently, Wes was the Chief Strategy Officer at Neustar (NYSE: NSR), the leading company in authenticated identity for marketing and security. Neustar acquired his company, MarketShare, where he was co-founder and CEO. MarketShare’s analytics SaaS solutions are used by companies globally to drive resource allocation decisions and marketing investments, and is now the dominant market leader in the field of analytics, with its clients directing over $80 billion in marketing this year. MarketShare, recently acquired by Neustar for nearly a half a billion dollars, was backed by FTV Capital, Elevation Partners and Silver Lake, the world’s largest technology investor.
Prior to starting MarketShare, Wes was with Omnicom Group (NYSE: OMC) as President and CEO of TBWA’s digital business, working with Nissan, Sony, Pfizer, and other brands. Prior, he was the founder and CEO of Direct Partners, building from scratch one of the industry’s first data-driven analytics companies, which was acquired by Omnicom Group.
Wes is a member of the Board of Directors of TrueCar (NASDAQ: TRUE) and BJ’s Restaurants (NASDAQ: BJRI), the LAPD Foundation, and a Trustee of Randolph-Macon College. Wes is an active member in both Young Presidents Organization (YPO) as well as the Pacific Council on International Policy.
