Walter (Buddy) Baker has over 30 years of experience in international trade finance. In
May 2009 he joined Fifth Third Bank as head of their Trade Services team, based in
Chicago. Prior to Fifth Third, Buddy worked for Atradius Trade Credit Insurance, ABN
AMRO Bank, Bank of America, Wachovia Bank, and The First National Bank of Chicago.
Buddy is a recognized expert in trade finance and author of numerous magazine articles
and the books Users' Handbook for Documentary Credits under UCP 600, Documentary
Payments & Short-Term Trade Finance, and The Regulatory Environment of Letters of
Credit and Trade Finance. He makes frequent presentations for national associations of exporters, importers,
bankers, and lawyers. Mr. Baker serves as a member-at-large of the National Letter of Credit Committee of the
International Financial Services Association and is actively involved in establishing national and worldwide
standard practices for L/Cs, such as the latest revision of the Uniform Customs and Practice for Documentary
Credits (referred to as "UCP600"), the official ICC guide for examining letter of credit documents, called the
International Standard Banking Practices for the Examination of Documents under Letters of Credit ("ISBP"),
the "eUCP" supplement to the UCP, dealing with electronic documents, the International Standby Practices
("ISP98"), and Article 5 of the Uniform Commercial Code.
He acts as an advisor to the Wolfsberg Group, an international group that includes most of the largest banks in
the world, whose purpose is to set standards for combating money laundering, and to the Institute of
International Banking Law & Practice. Buddy also serves on the Board of Directors of the Association of
International Credit and Trade Finance Professionals ("ICTF"), a multinational association of export credit
managers. Buddy earned his undergraduate degree from Yale and his MBA from Northwestern.
Dr. Hans Belcsák has served as the President of S.J. Rundt & Associates, Inc., a New
York head-quartered consulting and publishing firm, since 1973. S.J. Rundt &
Associates specializes in helping multinational companies, exporters, importers, banks
and investors assess risks and opportunities in their international strategies and
transactions. Dr. Belcsák is publisher of Rundt's World Business Intelligence, which
focuses on global political and economic trends, Rundt's World Risk Analysis Program,
a provider of country risk assessments, The Financial Executive's Country Risk Alert,
and Rundt's FXPRO Foreign Exchange Rate Forecasts. Additionally, Dr. Belcsák is
Chairman of the International Council for the American Management Association, a
consultant for the Management Center Europe in Brussels, and an advisor to a regional governor of the Russian
Federation. Dr. Hans Belcsák is a renowned keynote speaker on global developments and is a founding
member and supporter of ICTF. Dr. Belcsák was born and educated in Austria. He holds degrees in Commercial
Law and Political Economics as well as a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree. Dr. Belcsák’s dissertation in
economics has received significant recognition and accolade as a critical appraisal of Keynesian fiscal policy
applied to modern economies.
Richard Clark is the Director of Corporate Credit for Parker-Hannifin Corporation,
based in Cleveland, Ohio. Parker is a $10 billion global revenue company and is a
leading world-wide manufacturer of motion and controls technologies and systems.
Prior to Parker, Richard served as the Director of Global Credit for the Industrial
Technologies Sector of the Ingersoll- Rand Company. Mr. Clark has twenty-five years
of experience in credit and trade finance and has been actively engaged in global
markets and risk management. He has been active in various trade associations and
has served on the Board of Directors and as Chairman of FCIB. He has made numerous
presentations on international credit and trade finance and has sat on many panels throughout his career.
Richard Clark has traveled extensively, to over forty countries world-wide, and has managed teams that
support both export trade and international, in-country receivables.
David Cottrell, a Best-Selling Author, Award-Winning Leadership Expert, and a
Professional Speaker, has created a legacy of leadership excellence. During his
three decades of leadership experience in corporate America, David has lived the
obstacles, frustrations and issues today’s leaders face. The best-selling business
author of 25 highly acclaimed books, David has been a featured expert on public
television and has shared his leadership philosophy and lessons with more than
250,000 managers and leaders worldwide. He is currently CEO and President of
CornerStone Leadership Institute, one of the nation’s largest publishers of
management and leadership resources.
David has earned awards and achieved levels that continue to stand out as
remarkable. Armed with a degree in Marketing from the University of Arkansas, he was one of the youngest
sales managers in the history of Xerox Corporation. After a decade with Xerox, David joined FedEx where he
was elected multiple times to the President's Club. David's tremendous leadership achievements at Xerox and
FedEx were the result of his deep belief that he could expect the best from people by investing in them.
With more than three million copies of his books in print, David is most well-known for authoring the groundbreaking, best-selling books Monday Morning Mentoring, Monday Morning Choices and Monday Morning
Motivation and Monday Morning Leadership. His books have been adopted by organizations in numerous
countries as trusted leadership training tools.
Augustine (Gus) Faucher is Vice President and Senior Macroeconomist of The PNC
Financial Services Group. He is responsible for contributing to the preparation of PNC’s
U.S. economic forecast and alternative economic scenarios. In addition, he contributes
to PNC’s National Economic Outlook, Economic Releases, Market Expectations Survey,
and Economic Outlook Survey of Small Business Owners reports.
Prior to joining PNC in December 2011, Faucher worked for 10 years at Moody’s
Analytics (formerly Economy.com), where he was a director and senior economist. He
was responsible for running the firm’s computer model of the U.S. economy, edited a
monthly publication on the U.S. economic outlook, covered fiscal and monetary policy,
and analyzed various regional economies. Previously, Faucher worked for six years at the U.S. Treasury
Department, and taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Faucher is frequently cited in international, national, and regional media outlets. He has appeared on the ABC
World News, the CBS Evening News, and the NBC Nightly News, and is featured on CNBC, CNN, and Fox
Business. He has also appeared on public radio’s All Things Considered and Marketplace.
Faucher earned a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania, with concentrations in labor
economics and public economics. He also has an A.B. in economics from Cornell University.
Angela Hodges, RGCP, is Latin America Credit Supervisor for Eastman Chemical
Company, which manufactures and markets chemicals, fibers and plastics worldwide.
She has responsibility for Eastman's regional credit employees based in Mexico City and
Sao Paulo. Prior to joining Eastman Chemical, Angela spent almost 14 years with Alcoa
Inter-America, Inc. (a wholly owned subsidiary of Alcoa Inc.) where she managed their
entire export region portfolio, including Latin America, Caribbean, Europe and Asia.
Since obtaining her Master’s degree in International Management from Thunderbird,
The American Graduate School of International Management, Angela's career has been
focused entirely on international credit challenges. Angela has garnered over 20 years
of experience in credit management, all with Fortune 500 corporations. Last but not
least, Angela is extremely proud to serve on the Board of Directors for ICTF.
Peter Holewinski is the Global Head of Credit & Collections at Alcatel-Lucent, one of
the leading Telecommunications technology companies globally. He is responsible for
the global deployment of the company’s new Credit & Collections policies, processes
and systems in addition to having a senior signature on credit risk approvals. He has
previously worked at Citibank, on assignments in New York, Chicago, Singapore, and
Hong Kong where he set up the Structured Trade Finance and Trade Risk Syndication
teams in Asia/Pac, and Chase Manhattan Bank where he completed the credit training
program and had leadership assignments in International Financial Institutions and
Trade Finance Departments. He is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore
and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Washington, D.C. He has lived in Singapore,
Hong Kong and Amsterdam and is currently based out of the Murray Hill, NJ office of Alcatel-Lucent.
Dan Ikenson, Keynote Speaker, is the Director of Cato's Herbert A. Stiefel Center for
Trade Policy Studies, focusing on WTO disputes, regional trade agreements, U.S.China trade issues, steel and textile trade policies, and antidumping reform. Ikenson
has been involved in international trade since 1990.
Before joining Cato in 2000, he was director of international trade planning for an
international accounting and business advisory firm. Before that, he co-founded the
Library of International Trade Resources (LITR), a consulting firm providing interactive
information access and international trade consulting. And before that, he was a
trade policy and antidumping analyst at a few different international trade law practices in Washington, DC.
Ikenson is the author of many studies and articles on trade policy and is the coauthor of Antidumping Exposed:
The Devilish Details of Unfair Trade Law. He has appeared on The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, CNN, CNBC,
Bloomberg TV, MSNBC, ABC News, and NPR. His articles have been published in the Wall Street Journal, the
Washington Times, the Detroit News, National Review Online, and elsewhere. He holds a M.A. in economics
from George Washington University.
Brenda Jalowiec, CCE, CICP, RGCP is the Global Director of Credit and A/R for Nidec Motor Corporation. She is
a veteran credit professional with over 25 years in the field handling both domestic and international
portfolios. A graduate of Baldwin Wallace College (OH) with an MBA from Cleveland State University, Brenda
attended the Graduate School of Credit and Finance at Dartmouth College. She holds her CCE, CICP, and RGCP
designations. As Global Director of Credit and AR for Nidec Motor Corporation, she has responsibility for
operations in Mexico, Columbia, Venezuela, Canada and China, as well as extensive receivables in Latin
America and the Middle East.
Dan Joseph is the China Advisor for PNC’s Global Treasury Management Group. He
provides information, advice, and related services to PNC’s corporate clients relative to
their business activities in China.
Dan has been involved in China for than 18 years and lived there for about 12 of those
years. He has broad business experience in China including managing a several foreign
joint ventures and involvement in sourcing, exporting, and direct investment.
Prior to joining PNC in 2010 Dan held a number of positions in both finance and
operations including corporate banking at Chase Manhattan, mergers and acquisitions
at Prudential Bache Securities, project finance at Westinghouse Taiwan, Operations
Manager at Kennametal China, and President of Axcess Manufacturing, a quality control and procurement firm
based in China.
Dan has a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and a degree in International
Economics and Finance from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. He speaks and reads
Mandarin Chinese.
Steven Lotito, Senior Vice President & Head of Trade & Supply Chain – HSBC Bank
Walter Rebello is the Corporate Credit Manager and Latin America Finance Manager for Ravago Americas,
based in Orlando, FL. Ravago is a Belgian corporation with sales of over Euros 4 billion per year mostly
dedicated to the commercialization of plastic resins and synthetic rubber with over 8,000 customers in the
Americas. Ravago conducts business in more than 80 countries. Walter was born in Brazil, graduated from
Fundacao Getulio Vargas in Sao Paulo with a degree in Finance and a post-graduate degree in computer
science. He spent 19 years with Dow Chemical, including 5 years as Credit Manager for Dow/Dow Agro
Sciences/Pharmaceutical in Sao Paulo, Brazil and 5 years as Latin America Credit Manager out of Coral Gables
FL and Sao Paulo, Brazil. Walter has been an active member of the NCCA - National Chemical Credit
Association, serving on the board from 1993-1996 and again from 2004-2008, including Chairperson of the
International Division. He was involved with FCIB for almost 18 years, from the early 90's until 2010, but no
longer involved. Walter is now an active board member of ICTF. He has travelled to over 50 countries in his
professional life.
Jim Youse, CICP is Vice President Global Credit Risk Management at Elizabeth Arden where
he is responsible for managing $1.2 billion annual worldwide sales and providing direction
for A/R. Prior to joining Elizabeth Arden, Jim held management positions in Logistics, AR
and Credit for nearly 26 years, with a concentration in the Food, Apparel and Cosmetic
industries, working for companies such as Nabisco, Leslie Fay, and Dana Perfumes. Jim
holds an undergraduate degree from Temple University Business School and an MBA from
the University of Scranton. He is a member of CRF, NACM Oregon division and NAFCA (National Association of
Footwear and other CPG), and the Quarterly Club.