2016 Featured Speakers

Presented in alphabetical order.

Mark Attanasio
Crescent Capital Group LP

Mark is co-founder and managing partner of Crescent Capital Group LP and chairman and principal owner of the Milwaukee Brewers. He holds positions on several not-for-profit boards, including Heal the Bay, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and Harvard-Westlake School. He is also a member of Major League Baseball’s Finance and Compensation, Investment and Labor Policy Committees.

Alan Biller
Alan Biller & Associates

Alan is president and chief executive officer of Alan Biller &  Associates, a role in which he oversees more than $75 billion in assets. He founded his investment firm in 1982 after serving as director of another investment firm, SRI International. Alan frequently writes articles for such publications as Pensions & Investments, The Economist and Employee Benefits Journal.

Bailey Childers
National Public Pension Coalition

Bailey is executive director of the National Public Pension Coalition. She leads national and state efforts to protect and advance retirement security for working Americans. Prior to NPPC, she worked with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, where she managed efforts to prevent states from giving ill-advised tax breaks to wealthy and profitable corporations instead of investing in schools and communities. She graduated magna cum laude from Wellesley College.

Tera Brandon Clizbe
Anthem

Tera is the vice president of sales, National Labor & Trust, Anthem. She is a graduate of UC Berkeley, where she majored in American studies and labor relations. Tera is a passionate advocate for trust fund participants and is a board member of the Coalition of Organized Labor (COOL). She lives in Alamo, Calif. with her husband, Matt, and their two children, Cami, 13, and Brandon, 10.

Randy DeFrehnRandy DeFrehn
NCCMP

Randy is executive director of the National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans (NCCMP), which was founded to correct lawmakers’ misunderstandings of multiemployer plans as a cause of ERISA. In more than 40 years of experience working with multiemployer plans, Randy has served as an administrator of national pension and health benefit plans in the U.S. and Canada.

John ElliotJohn Elliot
NEPC

John is a partner at NEPC. He is a highly-respected and popular leader in the defined-benefits pension world. Since joining NEPC in 2003, he has spoken at many national conferences on the subject of Taft-Hartley plans. Prior to joining NEPC, he was the western regional director for the Marco Consulting Group, where he succeeded in developing a West Coast presence for the firm in the Taft-Hartley market.

Gregg HymowitzGregg Hymowitz
EnTrustPermal

Gregg is chairman and CEO of EnTrustPermal and chair of its Global Investment Committee. He founded EnTrust in April 1997 and has been its managing partner since then. Gregg also chairs the EnTrustPermal Inc. Investment Committee. Prior to EnTrust, he was a vice president at Goldman, Sachs & Co., which he joined in 1992. Gregg graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School with a juris doctorate in 1990.

Hank KimHank Kim
NCPERS

Hank is executive director and counsel for the National Conference on Public Employee Retirement Systems (NCPERS), the largest public trade association in the United States. Prior to joining NCPERS, Hank served for six years as a governmental affairs representative for an international public-sector union, working on benefits, appropriations, homeland security and health care issues.

Jacques LJacques Loveall
UFCW Trust / UFCW 8-Golden State

Jacques is president of UFCW 8-Golden State and chairman of UFCW Trust, which funds pension and health care benefits for 125,000 active workers, dependents and retirees in the food and drug industries. He is a vice president of the UFCW International Union and a vice president of the California Labor Federation. He is also chairman of the Loveall Foundation for Children, a nonprofit charity dedicated to serving underprivileged and abused children around the world.

Jack Marco
Marco Consulting Group

Jack is chairman of Marco Consulting Group. He began his career in investment consulting in 1977 when he was a senior vice president of multiemployer plans at A.G. Becker, Inc. When the company was bought by SEI Corporation in 1983, Jack became national manager of its Taft-Hartley Funds Evaluation Services. He is an investment consulting lecturer at DePaul University’s Graduate School of Commerce in Chicago.

James Meketa
Meketa Investment Group

James is managing principal and chairman of Meketa Investment Group. He founded it in 1978 to provide a broad range of strategic investment advisory services to institutional clients. He has more than 40 years of experience advising investment funds working with various Taft‑Hartley, non‑profit and endowment plan sponsors providing investment policy design, asset allocation modeling and analysis of manager and fund performance.

Russ NRuss Niemie
White Oak Global Advisors

Russell is chief risk officer of White Oak Global Advisors. He has more than 35 years of experience in the institutional investment industry. Prior to joining White Oak, he was chief investment officer of the N.Y. State Nurses Association. He has also served as president and CIO of Commerce Capital Management, a boutique asset management firm serving small institutional clients and bank trust companies. Russ earned his MBA at the University of Texas in Austin.

Peter Palandjian
Intercontinental Real Estate

Peter is chairman and CEO of Intercontinental Real Estate Corporation, a fully integrated real estate services firm, and an SEC-registered investment advisor with offices in Boston, New York, Orlando, Denver and Los Angeles. While overseeing Intercontinental’s affiliated operating companies, Peter is primarily responsible for Intercontinental’s investment strategy and institutional relationships.

Monte Tarbox
National Electrical Benefit Fund

Monte is executive director of investments for the National Electrical Benefit Fund, which provides pension benefits to more than 500,000 electricians belonging to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union. He has more than 25 years of experience as an investment officer and advisor serving multiemployer pension funds. Monte earned his MBA from the University of Chicago.