Speaker biographies

Wendell Cox is the principal of Wendell Cox Consultancy, an international public policy firm that specializes in urban policy, transport, and demographics. In 1999, Newt Gingrich, then-speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, appointed Mr. Cox to the Amtrak Reform Council and to serve as the chairman of its financial analysis committee. Prior to serving on the Amtrak Reform Council, he served on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission for highway and public transport and spent three years as the director of public policy at the American Legislative Exchange Council. He has advised governments in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and Europe on the design of competitive public transport service delivery. He lectures widely, has written numerous commentary articles, and is frequently interviewed by international, national, and local media.

James K. Glassman is a resident fellow at AEI, where he specializes in economics and financial markets. He was recently named editor in chief of The American Enterprise magazine. He is also the host and cofounder of Tech Central Station, an online journal that concentrates on technology and public policy. Mr. Glassman's most recent book, The Secret Code of the Superior Investor (Crown, 2002) was named one of the top ten investing books of 2002 by Barron's. Between 1993 and 2004, Mr. Glassman wrote an internationally syndicated weekly column on investing for the Washington Post. Between 2004 and 2006, he was a columnist for the Scripps Howard News Service. He was also the host of two weekly television programs, Capital Gang Sunday on CNN and TechnoPolitics on PBS. From 1987 to 1993, he was editor and part-owner of Roll Call.

Iain Murray is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), where he specializes in global climate change and environmental science. Mr. Murray is also a visiting fellow of the British think tank Civitas: the Institute for the Study of Civil Society. He writes weekly for Tech Central Station and regularly for National Review and National Review Online. He is also an associate editor of The American Enterprise magazine. Mr. Murray edits Cooler Heads, the biweekly newsletter of the Cooler Heads Coalition, and writes regularly on scientific and statistical issues in public policy. Mr. Murray’s writings have appeared in many places, including Encyclopedia Britannica, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, USA Today, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Denver Post, and in the Spectator (London). Before joining CEI, Mr. Murray was senior analyst and director of research at the Statistical Assessment Service. He also worked at the British Department of Transport in London.

Ronald Utt is the Herbert and Joyce Morgan Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation. At Heritage, Mr. Utt works in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, where he researches housing, transportation, and the federal budget. Mr. Utt also specializes in the application of privatization, restructuring, decentralization, and devolution of government programs. From 1990 to 1994, Mr. Utt served as executive vice president of the National Chamber Foundation, the research and education division of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan appointed Mr. Utt to lead his administration’s efforts to transfer federal government functions to the private sector. Mr. Utt worked on a variety of privatization proposals, including selling the northeast corridor of Amtrak rail passenger service. Mr. Utt is the founder and president of Potomac Renovations, Ltd., a northern Virginia real estate and residential renovation firm.

Joseph Vranich is the author of End of the Line: The Failure of Amtrak Reform and the Future of America's Passenger Trains (AEI Press, 2004). Mr. Vranich has been involved with railroad passenger issues for more than thirty years, including efforts in the early 1970s to create and expand Amtrak. He later became Amtrak’s public affairs spokesman. Between 1989 and 1995 he served as president of the High Speed Rail Association, receiving an award for distinguished service. Mr. Vranich was appointed by Congress to the Amtrak Reform Council, where he served from February 1998 to July 2000. He is the author of two other books about passenger rail service that won praise from the New York Times Book Review, Wall Street Journal, and Publishers Weekly, among others. He has testified before the U.S. Congress and spoken about rail service at forums throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan. He been a guest on ABC, BBC, C-SPAN, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, PBS, and NPR, and has appeared on more than 500 local radio and television talk shows.

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