SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES
Jerry Nickelsburg joined the UCLA’s Anderson School of Management and The Anderson Forecast in 2006. Since 2017 he has been the Director of The Anderson Forecast. He teaches economics in the MBA program with a focus on Asian economies. As the Director of The Anderson Forecast he plays a key role in the economic modeling and forecasting of the National, and California economies. He has conducted research in the areas of labor economics, industrial organization, statistics, and international monetary economics, focusing on the development of new data and the application of economic theory and statistical methods to policy issues. His current academic research is on specific skills, structural unemployment, and on energy efficiency in transportation. He is a regular presenter at Economic Conferences and is cited in the national media including the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Reuters. 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.
William Yu joined the UCLA Anderson Forecast in 2011 as an economist. At Forecast he focuses on the economic modeling, forecasting and Los Angeles economy. He also conducts research and forecast on China’s economy, and its relationship with the US economy. His research interests include a wide range of economic and financial issues, such as time series econometrics, data analytics, housing markets, human capital, and innovation. Meanwhile, he teaches business forecasting, predictive analytics, and data science courses at UCLA Anderson School of Management and UCLA Extension. In 2019, he received the distinguished instructor award for digital technology from UCLA Extension. He also serves as a faculty advisor for Applied Management Research Program at Anderson School. He has published over a dozen research articles in Journal of Forecasting, International Journal of Forecasting, Journal of International Money and Finance, etc. He also wrote op-ed articles in Los Angeles Times and other newspapers. He developed the City Human Capital Index, the Los Angeles City Employment Estimate, and wrote the quarterly US-China economic report. He has been cited in the local, national and overseas media frequently including Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Bloomberg, CBS Money Watch, Al Jazeera, U-T San Diego, LA Daily News, LA Daily Breeze, Straits Times, NBC, ABC, CNBC, CNN, and NPR, as well as various Chinese and Korean media. He was invited as a speaker for various events, including the annual Woo Greater China Business Conference, Cathay Bank economic outlook luncheons, and National Association for Business Economics.
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.
Edward Leamer is UCLA Anderson’s Chauncey J. Medberry Professor of Management and professor of economics, professor of statistics and director of the UCLA/Anderson Business Forecast Project. His philosophy on education is straightforward. After serving as assistant and associate professor at Harvard University, Leamer joined the UCLA faculty in 1975 as professor of economics. In 1990 he moved across campus to UCLA Anderson and was appointed to the Chauncey J. Medberry Chair. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow of the Econometric Society. In 2014 he won the award for Outstanding Antitrust Litigation Achievement in Economics, awarded annually by the American Antitrust Institute.
Leamer’s work has been impactful beyond the classroom and his academic research. As director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast, business practitioners in every field value his opinions. For example, in his December 2000 forecast, the UCLA Anderson Forecast (http://www.uclaforecast.com/) stood virtually alone in predicting the 2001 recession. In a special release on September 12, 2001, the Forecast correctly analyzed the likely unimportance of 9/11 for the evolution of the recession. In June 2002, Leamer began warning about a momentum-driven overheated housing market that was sure to cause problems for the economy in the future. In August of 2007 at the annual Federal Reserve Jackson Hole Symposium, Leamer argued for special targeting of housing in a paper titled “Housing IS the Business Cycle.”
Leamer is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and has been an occasional visiting scholar at the IMF and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. He has served on the Councils of Economic Advisors or Governor Wilson, Governor Schwarzenegger and Mayor Garcetti. He has been on the Advisory Board of the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In 2005-2006 he chaired a panel of the National Academy of Sciences on outsourcing and delivered the report to Commerce and to Congress.
He has published over 120 articles and five books and reminds those interested to hurry to Amazon.com to purchase his most recent books: either Macroeconomic Patterns and Stories, or The Craft of Economics. His research papers in econometrics have been collected in Sturdy Econometrics, published in the Edward Elgar Series of Economists of the 20th Century. His research in international economics and econometric methodology has been discussed in New Horizons in Economic Thought: Appraisals of Leading Economists.
Leila Bengali is an economist at The Anderson Forecast. She joined in 2019. As an economist, and a native Californian, she focuses on modeling the California economy and on policy issues that are relevant to California. Having studied behavioral economics both in college and in graduate school, she brings insights from this field to her work at The Anderson Forecast. She received her Ph.D. in economics from Yale University in 2019 where she was selected for the Russell Sage Foundation Summer Institute in Behavioral Economics and awarded the Whitebox Advisors Doctoral Fellowship. Her fields of concentration were behavioral economics and public finance. After graduating from Swarthmore College in 2011 with a B.A. in economic (major) and psychology (minor), she worked as an analyst at Analysis Group in the San Francisco Bay Area. During her time in economic consulting, she worked with a team of economists and experts to provide litigation support and research for major national and international companies in industries ranging from manufacturing to information technology. After working in economic consulting, Leila joined Economic Research at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Working with prominent economists on issues of employment, education, and economic mobility, Leila conducted research supporting U.S. monetary policy, writing reports for both internal and external audiences.
Leila's research lies at the intersection of behavioral economics and public finance. Within these fields, she focuses on how and why individuals use or ignore information when making decisions and on the resulting implications for policy. Leila has also worked with local governments to design and implement policy evaluations and has published in the field of labor economics.
Leo Feler joined the UCLA Anderson School of Management and the UCLA Anderson Forecast in 2020. He has conducted research and written articles in the areas of labor economics, urban economics, trade, banking and mergers and antitrust. He is responsible for the U.S. macroeconomic forecast. Prior to joining UCLA, Leo worked in management consulting at Cornerstone Research and Boston Consulting Group. At Cornerstone Research, he advised the U.S. government and corporations on antitrust litigation and economic disputes. At Boston Consulting Group, he advised clients in the consumer retail industry on revenue growth and supply chain optimization strategies.
From 2010 to 2016, Leo was an assistant professor of international economics at Johns Hopkins University. He also worked at the World Bank, where he was an advisor to the country director for Brazil.
Leo received his Ph.D. in economics from Brown University in 2010, specializing in urban and labor economics; his M.A. in international policy studies from Stanford University in 2002; and his B.A. in economics and international relations from Stanford University in 2002.
Dana Settle is a Founding Partner with Greycroft, and she heads the firm’s west coast office out of Los Angeles. Prior to co-founding Greycroft, Dana spent several years as a venture capitalist and advisor to startup companies in the Bay Area, including six years at Mayfield, where she focused on early stage companies in the mobile communications and consumer Internet markets.
Dana currently manages Greycroft’s investments in Anine Bing, AppAnnie, Bird, Clique, Comparably, Goop, Happiest Baby, Seed, Thrive Market, Versed and WideOrbit. She also managed the firm’s investments in Awesomeness TV (acquired by Dreamworks), Maker Studios (acquired by Disney), Pulse (acquired by LinkedIn), TheRealReal (IPO), Trunk Club (acquired by Nordstrom), Sometrics (acquired by American Express), Viddy (acquired by Fullscreen), and Voicea (acquired by Cisco).
Dana also serves as a Board of Director to IMAX Corporation. Her additional experience includes business development at Truveo (AOL), investment banking at Lehman Brothers and international business development at McCaw Cellular Communications (AT&T).
Dana holds a BA in Finance and International Studies from the University of Washington and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Lori Santikian is an Associate Adjunct Professor in the Finance and Strategy areas and the Director of the Fink Center for Finance and Investments at UCLA Anderson School of Management. She holds a B.A. in Economics and Applied Mathematics from UC Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University. Prior to joining Anderson, she was an Assistant Professor of Finance and Business Economics at the USC Marshall School of Business, where she taught MBA and Executive Education courses in valuation and finance. Her research is in the areas of financial intermediation, empirical corporate finance, and organizational economics, and has been published in the Journal of Financial Intermediation. At Anderson, Professor Santikian has won the Citibank Teaching Award, as well as the MBA Teaching Excellence Award chosen by both the full-time and fully employed MBA students. She teaches core business strategy and electives in valuation and data analysis. She also teaches corporate finance at UCLA School of Law.
Scott is a partner at Innovation Endeavors and a three-time entrepreneur. He co-founded three publicly-traded tech companies and is a board member at some of the most ambitious startups in tech. In his role as an investor, Scott looks to partner with entrepreneurs who are tackling technically difficult challenges that are capital intensive and transformative. Scott has led Innovation Endeavors’ investments in multiple companies, including: Plenty, which is driving the super evolution of the $3-trillion-dollar agriculture industry with indoor farms that are powered by machine learning, data science and automation; Clear Metal, which is leveraging AI and machine learning to clean up disorganized, dirty data in the supply chain; and Citrine, which uses AI and massive data sets to accelerate materials discovery and product development.
Prior to joining Innovation Endeavors, Scott was CEO of Slice, where he was also a co-founder and board member; Co-Founder and CEO of FiberTower; Co-Founder and CTO of Clarus Corporation and Co-Founder and CTO of SQLFinancials.
Scott is a lecturer in management at Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he teaches management and new venture formation. He serves on the school’s Advisory Council and is Chairman of the advisory board for its MSx Program.
Scott earned a master’s degree in management from Stanford Graduate School of Business, and a bachelor’s degree in finance from The University of Florida with high honors. He holds multiple software and technology patents.
He’s a father to twins, who attend college five states apart. His other personal passions include taking unplanned, multi-state motorcycle rides and building things, including a new home made out of advanced materials.
A graduate of UCLA (B.A., ’82) and Harvard Business School, Terry Kramer has extensive technology and leadership expertise in the domestic and international telecommunications industry. Since beginning his career at Harris Corporation and Booz Allen Hamilton, Kramer has held executive roles at AirTouch, PacTel and Vodafone globally. At Vodafone, he was the group strategy officer, group HR officer and chief of staff. He was also regional president of Vodafone Americas, with responsibilities for oversight of Vodafone’s 45% interest in Verizon Wireless and Vodafone’s venture capital activities. He also served on the Executive Committee at Vodafone Group Plc. During his tenure at Vodafone, he and his family moved no fewer than eight times to locations that included London, The Hague, Dallas, Phoenix and San Francisco. The benefit: “Living in so many different places, working in so many fundamentally different environments gave me a new appreciation of contextual leadership — how leaders must be adept at assessing the different context of each leadership role to ensure a dynamic nature to their style, achieving success for that unique environment.”
While serving as an entrepreneur in residence at the Harvard Business School between 2011 and 2013, Kramer was appointed by President Obama to serve as Ambassador, Head of U.S. Delegation for the World Conference on International Telecommunications in June 2012. This delegation formulated and communicated the U.S. policy regarding the criticality of a free and open Internet as well as an inclusive, multistakeholder governance, the need to proactively address cybersecurity threats and the need for liberalized, open markets that encouraged accelerated global broadband access. The conference was covered by CNBC, New York Times and Wall Street Journal.
No stranger to the field of academia (his parents were teachers), Kramer jumped at the opportunity to work at UCLA Anderson, as it provided “a chance to engage with the next generation of leaders.” An adjunct professor at UCLA Anderson since 2013, Kramer is a full-time faculty member, teaching the foundational technology management course, covering the impact of disruptive innovation on products, services, markets and competition, and another course on the evolution and innovation in the mobile communications industry and promising areas of innovation. He is also the Faculty Director of the Easton Technology Management Center. Kramer is the Board Chair of Skylo Technologies and Harvard Business School’s California Research Center. He also serves on the advisory boards of RapidSOS and Textpert and UCLA’s Economics Department Board of Visitors.
Originally from San Carlos, California, Kramer and his wife, Suzan, currently reside in the San Francisco Bay Area, from which he commutes to Los Angeles regularly. Together they have developed a family foundation focused on education, health and human services, which “reflects our views about the impact of youth and education on our collective future.”
Damien Goodmon is the Founder and Executive Director of the nonprofit Crenshaw Subway Coalition (“CSC”). As the successor organization to the Citizens’ Campaign to Fix the Expo Rail Line, CSC seeks to empower stakeholder groups in the area of Crenshaw-Leimert Park-Hyde Park and highlight the issues of equitable and community-centered planning and development in the pursuit of racial and economic justice for South Los Angeles. As a result of the organization’s efforts, over $1.5 billion additional dollars have been invested in the mass transit infrastructure of Southwest Los Angeles, including the Leimert Park Village and Farmdale stations and the Crenshaw-LAX light rail line. At 21, Mr. Goodmon was named to the national staff of the Wesley Clark for President 2004 campaign, where among other duties he was responsible for supervising the development of over 400 student-community groups across the U.S. as the National Student Coordinator. In that role, Mr. Goodmon devised and executed the campaign’s campus outreach strategy, which emphasized improving traditional student outreach by utilizing interactive technologies, such as the internet, as a communication and organizational tool, and youth marketing tactics proven outside the political realm.
After the 2004 election, Mr. Goodmon served as the Senior Communications Advisor and National Spokesman for StopJohnRoberts.com, a media campaign and grassroots network of activists organized to oppose the nomination of John Roberts to the United States Supreme Court.
Mr. Goodmon has been a guest lecturer on issues of transportation, environmental justice, social activism and housing justice at the University of California Los Angeles, University of Southern California and California State University-Los Angeles. He is a lead subject of the award-winning documentary Beyond the Echo of the Drum, which premiered to standing room only audiences at the prestigious 2013 Cannes Film Festival Short Film Corner in France.
Damien Wesley Clark Goodmon is a graduate of Loyola High School and studied at the University of Washington, where he was a player on the nationally ranked Huskies football team. A fourth-generation Angelino and descendant of Charles and L.M. Blodgett, Mr. Goodmon currently lives in Leimert Park, where he is former Co-Chair of the community's neighborhood council. His family has lived in South Central Los Angeles for over 110 years. He is the author of the Get LA Moving plan. He has been trained by the Midwest Academy, Camp Wellstone, and 21st Century Democrats. He is a recipient of the 2008 LAUSD Trailblazer Award for “championing the rights of the masses of all American children,” the 2012 New Frontier Democratic Club Community Service Award, the 2013 Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Los Angeles Drum Major for Justice Award, the 2013 Black Women for Wellness Soldier Award, and the 2017 L.A. Urban Policy Roundtable Spirit of King Award. He was honored by LA Weekly in their 2009 LA People issue, received the Issues Advocate of the Year award in 2010 by the Urban Issues Forum, and was recognized as one of L.A.s’ 100 Most Influential African-Americans by the Los Angeles Wave Newspapers in 2013.
For his many local and national pursuits for social change, Mr. Goodmon has been profiled in local and national media outlets, including CNN, NBC and the Los Angeles Times. He has authored opinion editorials for the L.A. Daily News, L.A. Business Journal, KCET, Los Angeles Wave, Our Weekly, Los Angeles Sentinel, PACE News, LA Watts Times, and Inglewood Today.
Transportation reporters have noted, “[T]here is no doubt he changed the debate on routing and grade-crossings in Los Angeles, perhaps for years to come.” And after the successful No on Measure J campaign in 2012, a noted political commentator declared him a “brilliant policy analyst and strategist.” From 2011 - 2014, Mr. Goodmon served in the public sector as a staff assistant to two Board Members of the second largest school district in America (Los Angeles Unified School District) with review responsibility of facilities and procurement matters.