Speakers
Dr. Wade Pfau
Wade D. Pfau, Ph.D., CFA, RICP®, is the program director of the Retirement Income Certified Professional® designation and a Professor of Retirement Income at The American College of Financial Services in King of Prussia, PA, as well as a co-director of the college’s Center for Retirement Income. As well, he is a Principal and Director for McLean Asset Management and RISA, LLC. He also serves as a Research Fellow with the Alliance for Lifetime Income and Retirement Income Institute. He holds a doctorate in economics from Princeton University and has published more than sixty peer-reviewed research articles in a wide variety of academic and practitioner journals. He founded the Retirement Researcher website, co-hosts the Retire with Style podcast, and is a contributor to Forbes, Advisor Perspectives, Journal of Financial Planning, and an Expert Panelist for the Wall Street Journal. Wade’s newest book is Retirement Planning Guidebook: Navigating the Important Decisions for Retirement Success.
Dr. Shawn Cole
Shawn Cole is the John G. McLean professor in the Finance Unit at Harvard Business School, where he teaches and conducts research on financial services and impact investing.
Much of his research examines household finance in emerging and developed markets, with a focus on insurance, credit, and savings. He has also done extensive work on financial education in the US and emerging markets. His recent research focuses on designing and delivering advice and education over mobile phones, with an emphasis on agricultural and financial management.
He has worked in China, India, Indonesia, South Africa, and Vietnam. He is an affiliate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development. He is on the board of the Jameel Poverty Action Lab, as the co-chair for research.
Before joining the Harvard Business School, Professor Cole worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in the economic research department. He has served on the Boston Federal Reserve's Community Development Research Advisory Council, served as an external advisor to the Gates Foundation, and was the chair of the endowment management committee of the Telluride Association, a non-profit educational organization. He is a cofounder and board chair of a non-profit, Precision Agriculture for Development.
He received a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2005, where he was an NSF and Javits Fellow, and an A.B. in Economics and German Literature from Cornell University. His work on insurance earned the 2015 "Shin Research Excellence Award;" in 2015 he was also named given a “Faculty Pioneer Award” from the Aspen Institute.
Dr. Aaron Yelowitz
Dr. Aaron Yelowitz is a professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Kentucky. He is also a joint faculty member in the Martin School of Public Policy and Administration at the University of Kentucky, a senior fellow with the Cato Institute, and a research fellow with the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA). He serves on the editorial boards for Journal of Labor Research, Public Finance Review, and Inquiry.
Dr. Yelowitz received his Ph.D. from MIT in 1994 and has previously worked at UCLA as an assistant professor. He also previously served as director of the Institute for the Study of Free Enterprise at University of Kentucky. Under his leadership, ISFE received $3 million gift from the Joseph W. Craft III Foundation. He has published articles in economics and health-related journals including the Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Risk and Insurance, Journal of Retirement, Journal of Health Economics, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Health Affairs, Health Services Research, Health Economics, and Inquiry. He has taught graduate classes on public economics and health economics and undergraduate classes on health economics, labor economics, public economics, housing economics, and poverty and welfare programs.
Dr. Yelowitz's research has been featured in print publications such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, MarketWatch, Investor's Business Daily, the National Review, the Daily Caller, the Washington Times, the New York Post, the New York Daily News, the Orange County Register, the Houston Chronicle, the Boston Globe, the Louisville Courier Journal, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. He has also appeared on CNN's OutFront, CNBC's Street Signs, National Public Radio, KET's Kentucky Tonight, and WKYT's news hour. Dr. Yelowitz has also testified to the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship on franchising, to the Louisville City Council, Labor & Economic Development Committee on minimum wages, and as an expert witness in a number of cases.