GFLEC Advisory Council

Diana Crossan
Chair, Advisory Council
Former Retirement Commissioner
New Zealand
About Diana Crossan >>
Chris Battaglia
President & Publisher
Pensions & Investments
 
About Chris Battaglia >>
Ted Beck
Retired President & CEO 
National Endowment for Financial Education
About Ted Beck >>
George Daly
Professor and Dean Emeritus
Georgetown University
New York University
About George Daly >>

 

Elsa Fornero
Chair of Economics
University of Turin
About Elsa Fornero >>
Sopnendu Mohanty
Chief FinTech Officer
Monetary Authority of Singapore
About Sopnendu Mohanty >>
John R. Woerner
President - Insurance &
Annuities and Chief Strategy Officer

Ameriprise Financial
About John R. Woerner >>
Karen Vahouny
Communications Consultant
and Professor
The George Washington University
American University
About Karen Vahouny >>
Nicoletta Zappatini
Partner and
Managing Director

StormHarbour Securities
About Nicoletta Zappatini >>

About the Advisory Council

 

Diana Crossan
Chair, Advisory Council
Former Retirement Commissioner, New Zealand

Diana Crossan has had a very varied career. In recent years she has had expert roles in several significant financial education projects including work for the Ministry of Finance in Russia and with PISA at the OECD. Diana is the Chair of the Financial Education Centre at Massey University in New Zealand and of a start up annuity company; Retirement Income Group. In the 2019 New Year Honours, Diana was appointed Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit.

She started her career as a probation officer. She held several senior roles in the public service including the head of the Equal Employment Opportunities. She was in the set up team for Contact Energy. For a short time, she was GM Hydro at Clyde and Roxburgh dams. Diana has been the Chief Executive of Wellington Free Ambulance since February 2013.

Diana worked in the senior management team of a large financial services company, AMP in both New Zealand and the UK. Diana was New Zealand’s Retirement Commissioner for 10 years; with roles to lift the financial literacy of New Zealanders and to provide advice to the Government regarding New Zealand’s retirement income policies.

Diana has several roles in the not for profit sector working with refugees and disadvantaged girls and women.

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Chris Battaglia
President and Publisher of Pensions & Investments

Chris Battaglia is president and publisher of Pensions & Investments, the pre-eminent brand serving the information needs of global asset owners and the asset management community. In 2016, the World Pension Summits in The Netherlands and Africa, joined P&I’s established global conference business in the U.S. Canada and Japan, expanding the publication’s audience and community across four continents that together represent more than 90% of the world’s institutional and retirement assets. He is responsible for managing the brand’s businesses and strategy including the fortnightly newspaper, Pensions & Investments, the digital platform, www.pionline.com, P&I Conferences, conferences.pionline.com, and research/data services, researchcenter.pionline.com. In July of 2018, he led the integration of a new joint venture with Global Fund Search, www.globalfundsearch.com, a leading asset manager research and selection platform, based in Denmark and New York, serving the needs of global asset owners.

A 36-year veteran of media, marketing and financial information publishing, Chris has also served as Vice President, Associate Group Publisher of The Industry Standard, a start-up media company that made publishing history during the internet boom of the late 1990’s and early 2,000’s, and has held key executive and management positions with Yahoo Inc., Corporate Finance magazine and Investment Dealer’s Digest. He has served as the Vice Chairman of American Business Media’s Publishers Committee and is actively involved as an industry expert on institutional investing and the role of media and communications. He began his career working on Wall Street in equity new issue marketing at Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith after earning a bachelor’s degree from Ithaca College. Chris is passionate about meeting investors around the world to learn more about their challenges and opportunities, but also enjoys returning home to his family in the United States. He is married and has three adult children ages 25, 22, and 20.

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Ted Beck
Retired President and Chief Executive Officer, National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE)

Ted Beck served as president and chief executive officer of the National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE) from October 2005 to July 2018. The National Endowment for Financial Education is the leading private nonprofit national foundation dedicated to inspiring empowered financial decision making for individuals and families through every stage of life.

In March 2014 Beck was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve on the President’s Advisory Council on Financial Capability for Young Americans. He also serves on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Advisory Committee on Economic Inclusion and as an independent trustee of Driehaus Mutual Funds. From 2010 to 2013 Beck served on the President’s Advisory Council on Financial Capability and was chair of its Research and Evaluation Committee. Previously, he served on President George W. Bush’s President’s Advisory Council on Financial Literacy and was chair of its Outreach Committee. Beck served as chairman of the board of the national Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy from 2012 – 2016. In April 2017 Beck received the William E. Odom Visionary Leadership Award from Jump$tart.

Prior to his appointment at NEFE, Beck served as associate dean of Executive Education and Corporate Relations at the University of Wisconsin - Madison School of Business.  Before joining the university in 1999, he spent more than 20 years in various positions for Citibank/Citigroup, including his last position as a managing director and market manager.  Beck received a B.A. from the University of Notre Dame and an MBA from the Wisconsin School of Business.

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George Daly
Professor and Dean Emeritus, McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University
and the Stern School of Business at New York University

George Daly is Professor and Dean Emeritus at both the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University and the Stern School of Business at New York University. He has also served in government posts including in the Executive Office of the President and the Securities and Exchange Commission. An economist, he studies the form of contracts used within organizations with a particular interest in professional sports leagues and has served as a consultant for the National Football League. He serves on the boards of a number of non-profit and for-profit enterprises. He received is A.B. from Miami University (Ohio) and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Northwestern University.

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Elsa Fornero
Chair of Economics, University of Turin

Elsa Fornero holds the Chair of Economics at the University of Turin, as well as academic positions as Scientific Coordinator at CeRP (the Center for Research on Pensions and Welfare Policies, which she founded in 1999), Honorary Senior Fellow of the Collegio Carlo Alberto, Vice-President of Share-Eric (Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe), Research Fellow at Netspar, and Policy Fellow at the IZA Institute for the Study of Labour. She is also a member of the Scientific Council of the Observatoire de l'Epargne Européenne, the Advisory Group of the New Pact for Europe and the Research Committee of the OECD International Network on Financial Education.

From 16 November 2011 to 28 April 2013, she served as Minister of Labour, Social Policies and Equal Opportunities in Italy’s “technocratic” government. Fornero is also the author of many publications on public and private pension systems, pension reforms, population ageing, household saving, retirement choices and life insurance.

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Sopnendu Mohanty
Chief FinTech Officer, Monetary Authority of Singapore

Sopnendu Mohanty is responsible for creating development strategies, public infrastructure and regulatory policies around technology innovation. Mohanty has spent over 20 years in various leadership roles globally in technology, finance and innovation. He has co-authored several patented works in area of retail distribution of the financial sector.

Mohanty extensively engages with ecosystems of various jurisdictions on innovation, policy making and tech enabled financial services. He is on the Institutional Investor’s list of influential FinTech global dealmakers. Mohanty has been recognized internationally as a FinTech thought leader and he was recently named the Market Reformer of the Year by IFL, Euromoney.

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John R. Woerner
President, Insurance & Annuities and Chief Strategy Officer, Ameriprise Financial

John Woerner is President - Insurance & Annuities and Chief Strategy Officer for Ameriprise Financial, responsible for leading the company’s RiverSource Insurance and Annuities businesses as well as its strategic and business development initiatives.

Within insurance and annuities, Woerner oversees a comprehensive lineup of product solutions that help clients more confidently achieve their goals by growing their assets, generating retirement income and protecting their wealth. As chief strategy officer, he leads the development and implementation of strategic programs designed to grow the business and increase market share for the company.

Prior to joining Ameriprise in 2005, Woerner was with McKinsey and Company, where he was a leader of its North American Asset Management, Brokerage and Wealth Management practice. Woerner was at McKinsey for 10 years and was elected partner in 2000. While at McKinsey, he developed strategies to help a broad range of leading financial services firms overcome challenges and pursue opportunities in the market. He was successful in helping clients enter new markets, build capabilities, accelerate growth and improve performance. He began his career at Goldman Sachs as a financial analyst.

Woerner holds a bachelor's degree from Pennsylvania State University and a master's of business administration from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a member of the board of directors of the American Council of Life Insurers.

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Karen Vahouny
Communications Consultant and Professor
The George Washington University
American University

Karen Vahouny’s career has included corporate and agency experience at the most senior level, having counseled C-level executives on a range of sensitive, high-impact issues. She began in the corporate world, gaining experience with mergers and acquisitions and change communication at PRC, a NYSE-listed, $750-million information technology firm. She was named the company’s first-ever vice president of corporate communication. In this role, she led the company’s award-winning internal and external communication activities, as well as a profit center focused on publications and multimedia services. Subsequently, she became a founding partner of a startup that eventually grew to become one of the top five independently owned PR firms in the country. Qorvis Communications (now part of the Publicis Groupe) grew from about 15 employees to nearly 100 over a 10-year period and was named a mid-size agency of a year by PR Week. Her focuses there included investor relations, corporate communication and financial communication.

In 2012, Vahouny embarked on a new career as an entrepreneur and professor. Her communication consulting firm focuses on helping leaders become more effective communicators and helping organizations deliver their messages with credibility, consistency and impact. Her clients include large and small companies, government agencies, associations and non-profits She is a member of the adjunct faculty of the George Washington University, American University and Marymount University, teaching business, finance and leadership communication courses for master’s degree candidates and executive education.

Vahouny holds a bachelor’s degree in marketing from the University of Virginia and a master’s of business administration from George Mason University.

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Nicoletta Zappatini
Partner and Managing Director, StormHarbour Securities

Nicoletta Zappatini is Partner and Managing Director at StormHarbour Securities in London. She joined the American investment bank in 2013 and is responsible for Italy and runs the Origination for Real Estate and Special Situations in EMEA.

From 2006 until February 2013 she was Head of Origination Fixed Income, Securitisation and Project Bonds in Italy at Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank.

She held several roles in Corporate Finance and Securitisation at Citigroup Global Markets in London between 1998 and 2006. Her career started as a Credit Analyst in 1987 at Citibank in Milan.

During her career she raised more than Euro 15 billion of financings for projects in Europe and in Emerging Markets and received several awards for the ground-breaking completion of transactions in new asset classes or countries.

She is part of the Advisory Board of the Global Financial Literacy Excellence Center at George Washington University School of Business in Washington and of the Cross-Border Ready Women’s Network in Brussels.

She is a member of the Italian Angels for Growth, the largest network of Business Angels in Italy and Crowdcube, the most important equity crowd-funding platform in Europe.

In July 2014 she finalised the program for women accessing boards in listed companies arranged by ValoreD e General Electric in Italy.

She is an honors graduate at L.Bocconi University in Milan and did attend the post-graduate International Finance course at Citicorp/New York University in 1988.

She is fluent in English and French and is Italian mother-tongue.

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