Credit Scoring: Going Beyond the Usual
Speaker Biographies
Kenneth Brevoort is chief of the Credit Information and Policy Section in the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau’s Office of Research. Before joining the CFPB, he was a senior economist at the
Federal Reserve Board, where he worked for 11 years. His present work focuses on the regulation of
consumer credit and mortgage markets, with particular focus on issues related to credit scoring and
credit access. Dr. Brevoort was the primary author of the CFPB’s recent Data Point on Medical Debt
and Credit Scores, which found evidence that scoring models are over-penalizing medical debt in
collections, and he was a major contributor to the Federal Reserve Board’s Report to Congress on Credit
Scoring and Its Effects on the Availability and Affordability of Credit. His research publications include
articles in several peer reviewed journals, including the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal
of Money, Credit, and Banking, and Real Estate Economics. He received his PhD in economics from The
Ohio State University in 2002 and an MS and BA from the University of Delaware.
Sarah Davies is senior vice president of analytics, research, and product management at
VantageScore Solutions LLC, a company launched by the three national credit reporting companies
(Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion) to provide credit grantors a highly predictive credit scoring model
based on a common methodology and that enables scoring of more consumers. In addition to her
product development work, Ms. Davies leads a team of scientists responsible for developing research
and analytics on relevant market trends and topics. Additionally, she is responsible for the annual
revalidation of the algorithms underlying the VantageScore model. She has nearly 20 years of
analytics and information sciences experience in various industries, with an emphasis on consumer
and behavioral choice analytics. She was senior vice president of product and marketing at Advanta
Financial Services, a leading provider of financial and business solutions for small to medium
businesses. Ms. Davies also served as executive vice president of marketing services at Bank One's
credit card division and was a principal at American Airlines' Sabre Decision Technologies, a leading
analytics and logistics firm for the travel industry. Ms. Davies earned undergraduate and graduate
degrees in operations research and statistics from the University of Wales and Iowa State University,
respectively. She also holds a master’s degree in theological studies from the Palmer Theological
Seminary of Eastern University. She is a member of the Operations Research Society and holds
several patents and copyrights on various analytical and risk management products.
Laurie Goodman is the director of the Housing Finance Policy Center at the Urban Institute. This
center is dedicated to providing policymakers with data-driven analysis of housing finance policy
issues that they can depend on for relevance, accuracy, and independence. Prior to joining Urban in
2013, Laurie spent 30 years as an analyst and research department manager at a number of Wall
Street firms. From 2008 to 2013, Laurie was a senior managing director at Amherst Securities Group,
L.P., a boutique broker dealer specializing in securitized products. Her strategy effort became known
for its analysis of housing policy issues. From 1993 to 2008, Laurie was head of Global Fixed Income
Research and manager of U.S. Securitized Products Research at UBS and predecessor firms. The UBS
Securitized Products Research group was ranked #1 by Institutional Investor for 11 straight years.
Prior to that, Laurie held positions as a senior fixed income analyst, a mortgage portfolio manager, and
a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Laurie has a BA in mathematics from the
University of Pennsylvania, and a MA and PhD in Economics from Stanford University. She has
published more than 200 articles in professional and academic journals and co-authored and coedited five books. Laurie was inducted into the Fixed Income Analysts Hall of Fame in 2009. She
serves on the Board of Directors of MFA Financial, and is a member of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s
Housing Commission, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Financial Advisory Roundtable, and
the New York State Mortgage Relief Incentive Fund Advisory Committee.
Michael Turner is the founder, president, and CEO of PERC. He is a prominent expert on credit
access, credit reporting and scoring, information policy, and economic development. He has testified
before Congress and numerous state legislatures, and presented studies to numerous government
agencies including the FTC, the FCC, the FDIC, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, the Council
of Economic Advisors, and the White House. Dr. Turner has worked on projects in over 25 countries
on six continents, and is a global thought leader on consumer and commercial credit information
sharing. He has worked on projects for the OECD, the Inter-American Development Bank, the
International Finance Corporation, the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, and USAID, among
others. He also launched the Asia-Pacific Credit Coalition and has collaborated with the APEC
Business Advisory Council to establish the Asia Pacific Financial Forum to promote financial inclusion
among the 21 member economies of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation. Dr. Turner served as
graduate fellow at the Columbia Institute of Tele-Information at the Columbia Business School,
executive director of the Information Services Executive Council, manager of government affairs for
the North American Telecommunications Association, and staff assistant in the U.S. Senate. Dr.
Turner received his PhD from Columbia University in International Political Economy and his BA from
Miami University in economics. He was awarded a Yeck Fellowship from Harvard Business School,
and was awarded the Ashoka Foundation Fellowship in 2009.