Speaker biographies
Andrew Beal is the deputy executive vice president and chief legal officer for the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), where he has worked since 1999. Previously, he was the general counsel at the organization. While at the NAIC, Mr. Beal has been directly involved in such projects as the creation of the Interstate Insurance Product Regulation Compact and national product standards for life insurance, annuities, disability income, and long-term care insurance; the development of producer licensing standards pursuant to the reciprocity requirements under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act; the development of a global information sharing agreement for state insurance regulators; and other modernization initiatives undertaken by the organization over the past few years. Mr. Beal’s prior legal experience includes serving as a judge advocate in the U.S. Marine Corps and as legal counsel with the Oklahoma Insurance Department. He has worked in private practice and has been in-house legal counsel for an insurance company. Mr. Beal’s main areas of focus are corporate, business, and insurance regulatory law.
Elizabeth Brown is an assistant professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law, where she teaches courses in business associations, corporate finance, law and economics, and securities regulation. Previously, she worked at Clifford Chance in London, where she focused on securities transactions having an aggregate value of over $30 billion. While at Clifford Chance, Ms. Brown taught a course in corporations as a lecturer in the London Program of Pepperdine University’s School of Law. Ms. Brown has also worked at Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue in Chicago, where she focused primarily on merger and acquisition transactions, and at Baker Botts in Houston, where her work involved corporate and securities transactions. She also assisted nonprofit organizations with their corporate organizational and transactional issues. Previously, Ms. Brown worked for four years as an international economist for the U.S. Department of Commerce, first in the Africa office and then in the office of East European and Soviet affairs. While at the department, she counseled both Fortune 500 and small businesses on exporting to and investing in the countries that she covered, participated in the negotiations for the Bilateral Investment Treaty and the trade agreement between the United States and Bulgaria, and assisted in organizing a White House conference on economic assistance to Eastern Europe.
Dennis Carlton is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, where he researches microeconomics, industrial organization, and antitrust issues. From 2006 to 2008, Mr. Carlton was the deputy assistant attorney general for economic analysis at the U.S. Department of Justice. He has served as an adviser on antitrust matters to the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and private clients. Mr. Carlton was also a commissioner on the Antitrust Modernization Commission, a congressional committee investigating antitrust laws.
He has published more than eighty articles and two books, including one of the leading textbooks in industrial organization, and is the coeditor of The Journal of Law and Economics and Competition Policy International.
John Cooke is an international economic relations consultant specializing in financial services, the chairman of the liberalization of trade in services committee at International Financial Services London, and the chairman of the Financial Leaders Working Group Insurance Evaluation Team. He is also a member of the editorial board of International Trade Law Reports and has published articles on international services liberalization and regulatory issues. Mr. Cooke is a frequent contributor to conferences and seminars on international trade policy and trade in services. From 1997 to 2003, he was the head of international relations at the Association of British Insurers, where he was responsible for British insurance industry participation in preparation for negotiating the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Financial Services Agreement in 1997 and the current WTO Doha Development Round. Mr. Cooke also acted as an adviser to the British insurance industry at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development insurance committee. From 1966 to 1997, he worked with the Department of Trade and Industry. Mr. Cooke was also a leader of the U.K. delegation and a conference vice president at the ninth United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
Robert Detlefsen is the vice president for public policy at the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies, an Indianapolis-based national trade association that represents more than 1,400 property-casualty insurance companies. In this role, Mr. Detlefsen conducts public policy research and analysis. His analyses and commentaries have appeared in specialized insurance publications, such as the Journal of Insurance Regulation, the Risk Management and Insurance Review, National Underwriter, and Best’s Review, as well as in the Washington Post, the Washington Times, the Houston Chronicle, and National Review. Mr. Detlefsen is the author of Civil Rights Under Reagan (Institute for Contemporary Studies Press, 1991) and has testified on numerous occasions before state and federal legislative committees and regulatory bodies. He has also served on the faculties of several colleges and universities.
Martin Grace is the associate director and a research associate at the Center for Risk Management and Insurance Research at Georgia State University. His research concerning the economics and public policy aspects of insurance regulation and taxation has been published in various journals of economics and insurance. In particular, Mr. Grace has undertaken various studies of the efficiency of insurance firms, insurance taxation, optimal regulation of insurance in a federal system, and solvency regulation. Mr. Grace is the former president of the Risk Theory Society, and he is a current associate editor of the Journal of Risk and Insurance.
Robert Inman is the Richard King Mellon Professor of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and is a professor of law at the university’s law school. He is also an associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a senior fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics. Throughout his career, Mr. Inman has been a visiting professor at numerous institutions around the world, including Chulalongkorn University in Thailand; Stanford University; University of California, Berkeley; University of London; Australian National University; and the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. He has advised both the U.S. and foreign governments in various capacities. Mr. Inman is the author of numerous books and articles on intergovernmental relations and serves as an associate editor for four journals devoted to policy and public finance.
Cecelia Kempler is the director of the Barry Kaye School of Finance, Insurance and Economics at Florida Atlantic University, where she also teaches “Insurance/Reinsurance: The Law and Its Impact on the Business in a Global Market.” Ms. Kempler was previously a partner with an international law firm, LeBoeuf Lamb Greene & MacRae (now Dewey & LeBoeuf), where she served insurance industry clients for twenty-five years. At the time of her retirement in 2003, Ms. Kempler was the chair of LeBoeuf’s life insurance practice and cochair of the insurance practice. During her tenure at the firm, Ms. Kempler represented clients in a broad range of industry-related matters, including insolvencies, mutual conversions, and reinsurance transactions. She has published numerous articles on insurance and reinsurance issues. Ms. Kempler serves on the supervisory board of Aegon NV and is on the board’s risk and nominating committees. She previously served on the audit and compensation committees for the board of Aegon USA.
Robert Klein is the director of the Center for Risk Management and Insurance Research and an associate professor of risk management and insurance at Georgia State University. He is a leading expert on insurance regulation and markets and has twenty-five years of experience as a regulator and an academic researcher. Mr. Klein has written numerous articles, books, and monographs on various topics in insurance and its regulation, including the structure and performance of insurance markets, competition monitoring, price regulation, catastrophe insurance problems, urban insurance issues, workers’ compensation, solvency regulation, and international insurance regulation. He has also testified frequently at legislative and regulatory hearings on issues affecting insurance consumers and the industry.
Robert E. Litan is the vice president of research and policy at the Kauffman Foundation and a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution. Mr. Litan was a cofounder and codirector of the AEI-Brookings Joint Center on Regulatory Studies and currently serves as an adviser to the AEI Center for Regulatory Studies, its successor. He is a longtime member of the Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee and has written extensively on a wide variety of regulatory and financial topics, including insurance regulation. Mr. Litan was the principal drafter of the Financial Services Roundtable’s report on insurance and megacatastrophes. His most recent books are Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, and the Economics of Growth and Prosperity, with William J. Baumol and Carl J. Schramm (Yale University Press, 2007), and Competitive Equity: A Better Way to Organize Mutual Funds, with Peter J. Wallison (AEI Press, 2007).
David Nason is the assistant secretary for financial institutions at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. In this role, he serves as a senior adviser to the secretary, the deputy secretary, and the under secretary for domestic finance on all matters relating to financial institutions, government-sponsored enterprises, financial education initiatives, the CDFI Fund, and the resilience of the financial services sector. Previously, he served as the deputy assistant secretary for financial institutions. Mr. Nason is the chair of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, and he oversees the Terrorism Risk Insurance Program. Prior to working at the Treasury Department, Mr. Nason was at the Securities and Exchange Commission, where he served as counsel to Commissioner Paul S. Atkins and advised on capital raising and corporate governance issues, Gramm-Leach-Bliley compliance, and hedge fund and mutual fund initiatives. He has also worked as an attorney at Covington & Burling and as a law clerk to the Honorable Marvin J. Garbis of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.
Jack Sinnott is a member of the board of directors of the Risk Foundation and is a senior adviser of Stone Point Capital. In December 2006, Mr. Sinnott retired as vice chairman of Marsh & McLennan Companies, Inc., (MMC) after a distinguished forty-three-year career at the company. Mr. Sinnott joined MMC in 1963 and held various executive positions with the company. In 1999, he was appointed chairman and CEO, a position he held until June 2003, when he retired from the company; in July 2005, he was reemployed as a vice chairman. He served on the MMC board of directors from 1992 to 2003. Mr. Sinnott has received numerous honors and awards for his contributions to the insurance industry and the education community. In 2004, he was recognized by St. John’s University’s School of Risk Management as “Insurance Leader of the Year.” He has also been the recipient of the Holy Cross College Leadership Award. Mr. Sinnott serves on the boards of a number of business, community, and educational organizations, including serving as a trustee of Holy Cross College.
Hal S. Scott is the Nomura Professor of International Financial Systems at Harvard Law School, where he has taught since 1975. He has been the director of Harvard’s program on international financial systems since 1986. Mr. Scott has written over seventy articles on all aspects of financial regulation, specifically banking and insurance regulation, as well as international financial transactions. He is a past president of the International Academy of Consumer and Commercial Law and a former governor of the American Stock Exchange.
Harold Skipper is professor emeritus of risk management and insurance at Georgia State University. His nonacademic experience includes advisory roles on insurance trade, regulation, and taxation for several organizations, including the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Bank, the World Economic Forum, and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. He serves as a research fellow at Peking University and as a member of the advisory boards of the Center for Insurance Research and Education at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore and the Singapore College of Insurance. Mr. Skipper is a past president of the American Risk and Insurance Association, past vice president of the International Insurance Society, and the founder of the Asia-Pacific Risk and Insurance Association. He chairs the Scientific Advisory Committee to the Geneva Association.
Terri Vaughan became the Robb B. Kelley Distinguished Professor at Drake University in January 2005, after serving for over ten years as Iowa’s insurance commissioner. She was the longest-serving commissioner in Iowa’s history and served under administrations of both major parties. During her tenure as commissioner, Ms. Vaughan was an active member of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC), serving as its president in 2002. Ms. Vaughan’s NAIC activities focused on financial convergence issues, international affairs, and regulatory modernization efforts. Prior to and following the passage of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), she was the NAIC’s chief liaison with federal banking regulators and served a key role in developing the NAIC’s response to GLBA. From 2001 to 2003, she chaired the NAIC’s Terrorism Risk Implementation Working Group and worked with Congress and the U.S. Department of the Treasury on the passage and implementation of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002. Ms. Vaughan is widely credited with being the architect of the NAIC’s Interstate Insurance Product Regulation Compact. She is vice chair of the regulation committee of the International Actuarial Association, a trustee of the American Institute for CPCU, and president-elect of the American Risk and Insurance Association. She is a director of the Insurance Marketplace Standards Association, the National Council on Compensation Insurance, Endurance Specialty Holdings, and the Principal Financial Group. Ms. Vaughan held previous academic positions at Baruch College of the City University of New York and Temple University and was employed as a consultant in the risk management and casualty division of Tillinghast Insurance Consulting, a Towers Perrin company. Ms. Vaughan is the coauthor of two college textbooks on insurance: Essentials of Insurance: A Risk Management Perspective (John Wiley & Sons, 1995) and Fundamentals of Risk and Insurance (Wiley, 2002), both with Emmett J. Vaughan.
Peter J. Wallison holds the Arthur F. Burns Chair in Financial Policy Studies at AEI, where he codirects the Institute’s program on financial market deregulation. He previously practiced banking, corporate, and financial law at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Washington, D.C., and New York. From June 1981 to January 1985, Mr. Wallison was general counsel of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, where he had a significant role in the development of the Reagan administration’s proposals for deregulation in the financial services industry. He also served as general counsel to the Depository Institutions Deregulation Committee and participated in the Treasury Department’s efforts to deal with the debt held by less-developed countries. During 1986 and 1987, Mr. Wallison was White House counsel to President Ronald Reagan. Between 1972 and 1976, Mr. Wallison served first as special assistant to New York governor Nelson A. Rockefeller and, subsequently, as counsel to Mr. Rockefeller when he was vice president of the United States.
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