Opening Keynote
GILLIAN TETT
Gillian Tett is an assistant editor of the Financial Times and oversees the global coverage of the financial markets. She was warning about the looming credit crisis over two years ago, her background as a social anthropologist having alerted her to the danger. In March 2009 she was named Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards. In 2007 she was awarded the Wincott prize, the premier British award for financial journalism, for her capital markets coverage. She was named British Business Journalist of the Year in 2008.
She joined the FT in 1993 and worked in the former Soviet Union and Europe, and in the economics team. In 1997 she was posted to Tokyo where she became the bureau chief, before returning in 2003 to become deputy head of the Lex column. She is the author of Saving the Sun; How Wall Street mavericks shook up Japan’s financial system and made billions (Harper Collins and Random House).
Gillian Tett has a PhD in social anthropology from Cambridge University, based on research conducted in the former Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
Closing Keynote
HOWARD TULLMAN
Howard A. Tullman serves as President and Chief Executive Officer of Flashpoint Academy, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Experiencia, Inc., and he is the immediate past President of Kendall College, in Chicago which he recently sold to Laureate Education. Mr. Tullman is General Managing Partner for the Chicago High Tech Investors, LLC and a Director of The Cobalt Group and Passage Events, both located in Seattle. He is also a Trustee of WTTW in Chicago, Chairman of the Endowment Committee of Anshe Emet Synagogue in Chicago, a member of Mayor Daley's Council of Technology Advisors, and an Adjunct Professor at Northwestern's Kellogg Graduate School of Management in Evanston and also a regular guest lecturer at the Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago.
Mr. Tullman has over 35 years of new business development, entrepreneurial ventures, management and turn-around experience with a particular emphasis on information systems for the insurance and automotive industries and an extensive operations background in online services, large-scale information assembly and delivery systems, database design as well as in the development, creation and production of all types and formats of multimedia content including CD-ROMs and DVDs. He has designed and developed interactive interfaces, award-winning computer games, automated teaching systems, a number of the leading national music, video and employment websites, and other electronic entertainment, training products and services, along with many other information-based products and services.
After 10 years as a lawyer at Levy and Erens in Chicago, in 1980, Mr. Tullman founded CCC Information Services, Inc., a provider of information systems to the country's largest property and casualty insurers. CCC successfully raised venture capital and subsequently completed an IPO in 1983 and several subsequent public offerings. Since taking CCC Information Services private in 1987, Mr. Tullman has founded or served as CEO or Board Chairman of eight other entrepreneurial companies and as a director and/or advisor to many other early-stage companies. In 1990, he also founded Eager Enterprises, a venture capital firm focused on the information industry. He is also active in the arts and has served on the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (1993 – 2001).
Mr. Tullman graduated with a Bachelor of Arts, with Honors, from Northwestern University. He also holds a J.D., with Honors, from Northwestern University School of Law.
