Speakers

Melvin Stephens Jr. is Interim Chair and Professor of Economics at the University of Michigan, and a Fellow of the Society of Labor Economists.

He received his PhD in Economics from the University of Michigan and has previously taught at Carnegie Mellon University.

His research examines how individuals and households respond to shocks both at the individual and local labor market level. He has published papers on household consumption and savings
decisions and on the impacts of job loss, disability, health, and educational institutions on labor market outcomes.

Doug is a Senior Director at Flagstar and leads the bank’s Institutional Banking business. With more than 30 years of experience in banking and financial services, Doug has extensive expertise across institutional banking, government banking, payments, insured deposits, and financial technology.

In his current role, Doug leads a team that serves as a trusted banking and payments partner to large and complex organizations across the public sector, including federal, state and local governments, municipalities, public school districts, and other public sector entities.

Prior to joining Flagstar in 2021, Doug spent 10 years at UMB Financial where he served as Senior Vice President and Executive Director of FDIC Sweep Programs and Fintech Initiatives. During his tenure, he led UMB’s BaaS initiatives and developed strategic partnerships with leading fintech and financial services companies while also growing assets under management in UMB’s proprietary FDIC Sweep Program from approximately $8 billion to an impressive $68 billion.

Doug holds a BBA in Finance from The George Washington University and earned a certification from The Wharton School in Fintech Revolution: Transformative Financial Services and Strategies. 

Yinuo Zhang (pronounced "EE-nwoah") is a senior economist at RSQE, where she assists with US forecasts. 

Prior to joining RSQE, she received her Ph.D. from Princeton University.

Her personal research centers on the intersection of macroeconomics and labor economics, with a particular emphasis on the home sector.

Joanne Hsu (pronounced “shoo” ) is the Director of the monthly Surveys of Consumers, tracking leading economic indicators including consumer sentiment and expectations, and a Research Associate Professor at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.

Dr. Hsu’s research is primarily in the fields of household finance, labor economics, public economics, and survey methods, with a current focus on financial sophistication and cognition, and consumer experiences with debt. She is an appointed member of the American Economic Association Committee on Economic Statistics (AEAStat) and associate chair of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession (AEA CSWEP). Dr. Hsu also serves on the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s Academic Advisory Council. Previously, she served as a Principal Economist in the Division of Research and Statistics at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, where her policy portfolio included the Survey of Consumer of Finances and the consumption forecast, as well as a visiting professor at the Department of Economics, Howard University.

Dr. Hsu completed her PhD in economics at the University of Michigan and her AB in economics and international relations at Brown University.

Allen Sinai is the Chief Global Economist, Strategist and President at Decision Economics, Inc.

He won the Top Forecaster-Wall Street Journal Survey in 2006, as well as the USA Today Survey Top Forecaster in 2003 and 2005. Sinai has worked with policymakers across the globe, including in the United States, Japan, Europe and Asia.

He is listed as an event speaker with the Milken Institute.

Michael McWilliams is a Senior Economist at RSQE. He earned his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Michigan, and he has also received an M.Sc. in economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

At RSQE, Michael assists with forecasts of the Michigan economy and leads the development of state tax revenue projections. He also participates in RSQE's local economic forecasts for the City of Detroit, Oakland County, MI, and Washtenaw County, MI. In 2018, Michael coauthored an RSQE report on the economic impacts of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI). 

Michael’s personal research focuses on a range of topics in environmental and natural resource economics. During his graduate study, Michael interned at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Transportation and Air Quality.

Lutz Kilian has been a vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas since 2019. 

He received his MA in development banking from the American University in 1988 and his PhD in economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1996.

Prior to his PhD, he worked for the research department of the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington, D.C. He joined the faculty of the University of Michigan in 1996, where he was tenured in 2002 and promoted to professor of economics in 2008. During 2001–03, he served as the research adviser to the European Central Bank in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Dr. Daniil Manaenkov has been engaged in tracking and forecasting the U.S. economy for almost 20 years. He has been leading RSQE’s national forecasting team since 2013. Prior to joining RSQE, he worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, where he managed the bank's macroeconomic forecasting model.

Daniil testifies regularly in front of the Michigan Legislature and briefs the Governor of Michigan annually on RSQE's national economic outlook. Governor Rick Snyder sent Daniil a personal thank-you letter for his contributions to the state budget process. Daniil frequently shares his views on national economic conditions with various media outlets, with the list of recent interviews featuring CNBC, CGTN America, WXYZ-TV Detroit, NPR's Marketplace, and the Wall Street Journal. Daniil also leads RSQE’s development and adoption of cutting-edge time series and machine learning forecasting methods and contributes to RSQE's forecasting project with the City of Detroit.

Daniil’s main areas of expertise are macroeconomics, monetary economics, and applied econometrics. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Minnesota, and holds a Master of Science degree in applied mathematics and physics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. Daniil recently coauthored The U.S. Economic Outlook for 2026–2028, and The Detroit Economic Outlook for 2025–2031.

Ole Agersnap is the Research Lead for middle market business research at the JPMorganChase Institute, based in Washington, D.C.

His current research uses proprietary bank data to generate insights on mid-size businesses to inform policymakers, academics, and the general public.

He holds a B.Sc. in mathematics-economics from Aarhus University, a M.Sc. in econometrics and mathematical economics from the London School of Economics, and a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University, where his research focused on the effects of taxes and transfers on individual and business economic behavior.

Ron S. Jarmin is the former deputy director and chief operating officer of the U.S. Census Bureau. In these roles, he planned, coordinated and oversaw daily operations at the largest statistical agency of the federal government. While best known for the decennial census, the Census Bureau conducts other surveys and censuses that measure changingindividual and household demographics and the economic condition of the nation.

Jarmin served as acting director from January 2021 to January 2022, performed the nonexclusive functions and duties of the director from July 2017 to January 2019, and previously served as the associate director for economic programs. In these roles, Jarmin championed modernization efforts across the Census Bureau including the introduction of internet response for the 2020 Census and moving to 100 percent internet data collection for the Economic Census beginning in 2017. He has overseen the introduction of new nonsurvey data to improve economic indicators, the consolidation of surveys, and the deployment of enterprise investments to minimize system, application, and dissemination costs. From 2011 to 2016, Jarmin served as assistant director for research and methodology where he oversaw a broad research program in statistics, survey methodology, and economics aimed at improving economic and social measurements within the federal statistical system. Since beginning his career at the Census Bureau in 1992, he has also served as the chief economist, chief of the Center for Economic Studies, and as a research economist.

Jarmin holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Oregon. An elected fellow of the American Statistical Association, he has published papers in the areas of industrial organization, business dynamics, entrepreneurship, technology and firm performance, urban economics, data access, and statistical disclosure avoidance.

George A. Fulton is a research professor emeritus at the University of Michigan, and a director emeritus of the Research Seminar in Quantitative Economics in the Department of Economics. He also is a former Board Chair of the U-M Children’s Centers. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Michigan and is a lifetime member of the U-M Alumni Association.

Dr. Fulton forecast economic and fiscal activity at the national, state, and local levels for over 40 years. He provided testimonies on the economic and revenue outlooks to the Michigan legislature and administration twice a year from 1992 to 2016, as well as delivering a keynote presentation at the Governor’s Economic Outlook Briefing annually from 1984 to 2016. In 2015, he was appointed by the governor and state treasurer to a three-person panel to evaluate and approve the City of Detroit’s revenue forecasts that form the basis for the City’s yearly budgets. He continues to serve in that role.

One focus of his has been to portray the economy to non-economists, including to alumni at Michigania’s faculty forum, to the U-M Retirees Association, to the Wolverine Caucus (alumni working in and around the State Capitol), and during the Road Scholars Tour connecting faculty with residents in communities throughout Michigan. He has received numerous recognitions for his work, including: the inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Economic and Demographic Analysis—since named in his honor—from REMI, the nation’s most prominent regional forecasting and economic analysis organization; special tributes from both former Governor Snyder and the State of Michigan legislature; a letter of commendation from former U-M President Schlissel; and several proclamations from regional leaders.

Rick Hampson, Commercial Banking Senior Regional Director, joined Old National Bank as Metro Detroit Market President in January 2023. In August 2026, he was promoted to Commercial Banking Senior Regional Director, East Region.  In this role, he is responsible for Middle Market and Corporate Banking for Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee and additional expansion markets for Old National Bank. Rick has 30+ years of commercial banking experience in large corporate syndicated banking and middle market banking. His investment experience includes fundraising, capital markets, and private equity investment as well as investment banking and managing M&A advisory efforts.

Prior to Old National Bank, Rick has held leadership roles at Brown Brothers Harriman, Comerica Bank, PNC Bank and Citizens Bank (Michigan Statewide President) in New York, NY and Detroit, MI. Hampson also was a partner at the private equity firm Arctaris Impact Investors.

He is a current Board Member for The Detroit Economic Club, Citizens Research Counsel, Gleaners Community Food Bank (Executive Committee and chair of Advocacy Committee) and the Detroit Regional Chamber (Executive Committee and Chair of the Investment Committee). Rick has a BS from Boston College and an MBA from Columbia University.  Hampson played 4 years of D1 soccer at Boston College.

Rick lives with his wife Julie in Rochester, MI and has two children, Katie and Andrew.

David W. Berson is Chief US Economist for Cumberland Advisors, a mid-sized wealth management firm based in Sarasota, FL. He provides analyses of the US economy and impacts on financial markets for Cumberland's board of directors, portfolio managers, and clients.

Previously, he was the Chief Economist for Nationwide Insurance, where he managed a team of economists and was in charge of providing forecasts and analyses of the economy as well as financial and insurance markets that were used by Nationwide's senior leadership team and business units for strategic and corporate planning purposes. He also acted as Nationwide's primary spokesperson on economic and financial market conditions, prospects, and policy. Berson was previously SVP & Chief Economist and Head of Risk Analytics at the PMI Group, where he headed modeling and forecasting for the company. Prior to that, he was VP & Chief Economist at Fannie Mae, where he advised the company on national and regional economic, housing, and mortgage market policy and conditions. He has also been Chief Financial Economist and Head of Regional Economic Analysis at Wharton Econometrics, Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, and Assistant Professor of Economics at Claremont McKenna College and Claremont Graduate School. His government experiences have included Staff Economist on the Council of Economic Advisers and Economic Analyst at the Treasury Department and the Office of the Special Trade Representative.

Berson is currently President of the National Business Economic Issues Council (NBEIC), is a former President of the National Association for Business Economics (NABE), and is a frequent speaker to media and industry groups on the economy, housing, and financial markets. He has a BA in History and Economics from Williams College, a Master of Public Policy and a PhD in Economics from the University of Michigan, and has a Certified Business Economist (CBE) designation from NABE.

Molly Kleinman serves as the managing director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy program. In this role, Molly oversees the day-to-day management and provides strategic direction for STPP.

Molly brings over a 15 years of experience across several areas of higher education, with much of her work centering on educational technology, access to information, and intellectual property.

Molly received her PhD in higher education policy from the University of Michigan Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education, her MS in information from the University of Michigan School of Information, and her BA in English and gender studies from Bryn Mawr College.

Robert is the group manager over the team producing the G.17 Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization statistics at the Federal Reserve. The statistics cover the manufacturing, mining, and industrial sectors and are published each month around the middle of the month.

Robert also has an active research agenda studying firm financing and investment decisions, with a particular focus oncommercial real estate investment and financing.

Johanna Mathieu is a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor.

Her research develops new methods to actively engage distributed energy resources such as energy storage, flexible electricloads, and renewables in power system operation. She directs the U-M Institute for Energy Solutions and the Great Lakes Energy Accelerator at Michigan (GLEAM).

She has PhD and master's degrees from the University of California - Berkeley anda bachelor's degree from MIT, and she was a postdoctoral researcher at ETH Zurich, Switzerland.